We will no doubt return to weightier topics shortly, but for the moment, there is this: I recently ran across this clip from a 1994 interview in Australia with Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. Does anyone know why Page is wearing a “Recovering Catholic” shirt?

(“Recovering Catholic” is a term in the Catholic world for someone who had a negative experience being Catholic and describes themselves as trying to recover from it, used most often (if the vernacular I’ve heard over the years is any indication) by people who have moved on from Catholicism.)

Perhaps it’s a meaningless gesture; more committed Zeppelin fans may know.

By the way, this interview has pride of place in Zeppelin arcana because toward the end of the interview (just past the eleven-minute mark), someone from the crowd yells out to ask what the “symbols” mean. This is presumably a question about the meaning of the famous and famously cryptic “ZOSO” symbols on the Led Zeppelin IV album. (In fact, the fellow who barked the query wrote about it here.)

In the interview, some confusion about the question ensues, as Page displays his “Recovering Catholic”

shirt, and Plant replies, with a mischievous look, “Frying tonight.” Two minutes of Internet searches make me wonder if this is an English reference to fish and chips (cf. Gerald Priestland, Frying Tonight: The Saga of Fish and Chips (London, Gentry, 1972 — surely a book with a winning title and an even smarter subtitle).

And just like that, the Zeppelin hermeneutics begin: Was this a jokey reference to Catholics eating fish on Fridays? An indication of a desire to get “fried” after the show? A Pythonesque non sequitur? An exceedingly oblique reference to the stone in the present day recovered Catholic Church in Israel on which Jesus is said to have fried fish for his friends?

No doubt others have an interpretation of this Sacra Page-ina.

Tommy Beaudoin, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York

2 Comments »

1. 

   Hard to tell what the t-shirt really means, since they haven’t play for who knows how long, there is still hope for anybody who has been in the darkness or who is still in the darkness. People can still make a change. Never too late to convert.

   Comment by sunshine — September 15, 2012 @ 1:04 am

2. 

   A “recovering Catholic” is someone who is regaining their humanity after leaving the “unworldliness” of faith. In other words, religion = a trauma to be recovered from.

   “Frying tonight” = going to hell for apostasy, PLUS the fish and chips thing PLUS a reference to a film in the long-running “Carry On” series, Carry On Screaming.

   This film clip will give you some context: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bY0oM0FwGUo

   So yes, Plant was quoting a known catchphrase and also the Carry On film.

   Comment by Ecron Muss — December 27, 2012 @ 2:16 pm

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