Led Zeppelin "Fool In The Rain"

Ugh, it was painful.  He was heartbroken.

We've all had those friends, right?  Who go through a breakup and are just f-n miserable?  You've been there?

You do your best to strike a balance between letting them have their grief, and keeping them from falling into an abyss of self-pity.

Most importantly, you make sure you are gentle, sensitive and accepting.  You make sure you are not an ass.

He was my roommate and he'd been blind-sided.

For over a year, they'd been inseparable.  Happy.  Then she suddenly just turned it off.

She broke up with him.  Didn't want to talk to him.  Didn't want to hear from him.  Lost all semblance of affection for him.  Or even for their relationship's previous existence.  It was like it never happened, to her.

To him, it was painfully, painfully real.  And this being his first big breakup, he took it hard.

He went into my record collection and pulled out "In Through The Out Door."

It was a strange choice for him.  We had this running back and forth thing.  I was a Zeppelin guy.  He was a Who guy.  You would think he'd take refuge in his favorite band, instead of mine.

He played "Fool In The Rain."

He played it again.

Then again.

I must point out to the kids reading today, that my version of "In Through The Out Door" was actually on cassette.  So after listening to the six minute song, he had to hit rewind on the boom box, and let the tape spool back for 90 seconds or so before banging the Play button and sending the music into forward motion again, usually catching the last little bit of the previous song "Southbound Suarez," before "Fool In The Rain" started again.

And again.

And again.

The next day, I walked into the room, and he was at the boom box.  Again.  "Fool In The Rain" again.

Over and over.  "Fool In The Rain."

This went on.  It went on to the point where it crossed that bridge from me letting him have his grief, to pulling him out of the abyss of self-pity.

And, truth be told, I really couldn't figure out why he was playing that Zeppelin track.

It wasn't "their song."  He didn't love Zeppelin.  She certainly didn't love Zeppelin.

Why that song, I finally asked?

"Because I'm 'just a fool waiting on the wrong blond.'"

Huh?

Oh wait.  I get it.  She's blond.  He's a fool waiting on the wrong blond.

Except . . .

That's not the lyric.  The final line of the song is "just a fool waiting on the wrong block."

"I should just let it go," I thought to myself for about a nanosecond.

Unfortunately, two things got the better of me.

One, was that I truly believed that if could release him from the idea that the song was about a fool waiting on the wrong blond, he'd somehow free himself from the repeated misery of playing a song that depressed him, over and over.

Two, I sometimes (especially then, but still even today) can't help myself from being an ass.

I told him that I was pretty sure the lyric was "on the wrong block."

But he was pretty sure it was "on the wrong blond."

We rewound the tape, to just the last verse, thinking that would help.  Because if we knew the previous line, we would know if Zeppelin was trying to rhyme "block" or "blond."

That line is "When I'm breathless I run 'til I drop."

"Drop"?!?  That doesn't rhyme with either word!!!

Well, we had a little (very little) laugh about that and the mood lightened for just a moment as we agreed that the line was whatever either of us wanted it to be.

And thankfully kids, song lyrics were not available on the internet (we didn't even know what the internet was) at the time this story took place.

Because otherwise, I would have had to search around online and further be an ass, and prove that I was right.


Hear the song on Youtube.