Drunk Passenger INSULTED the Man Next to Him on a Flight — Then Learned It Was JIMMY PAGE D

drunk passenger insulted the man next to him on a flight then learned it was Jimmy Paige. British Airways flight 178 from John F. Kennedy International Airport to London, Heathrow, departed on a November evening in 1977 with a full firstass cabin and the specific quality of quiet that transatlantic firstass cabins have when everyone on board has settled into the understanding that the next 7 hours belong to sleep or work and that the social obligations of ordinary life are suspended for the duration of the crossing. Jimmy Paige was in the window seat in the third row. He was wearing jeans and a jacket that had been chosen for the purpose of sitting in an aircraft seat for seven hours rather than for how it would appear to the other occupants of the cabin. His hat was pulled down in the way that provides a reasonable degree of privacy without demanding invisibility. He had a small

notebook on the tray table and he had been writing in it since shortly after takeoff. Staff notation rather than words. the musical thinking that long flights made possible by removing him from the immediate demands of the work and allowing the less structured kind of thought that the structured work required as its foundation.

He had been on tour for 6 weeks. The tour had been everything that led Zeppelin tours were which was large and sustained and demanding in the specific way that performing at that scale for that duration demands. Not just the performances themselves, but the accumulation of everything around them, the logistics and the distances and the constant management of being in a public role without interruption.

The flight home was the first unstructured time he had had in 6 weeks. And he was using it the way he always used unstructured time, which was to think about music. The man in the aisle seat of the same row had boarded at JFK with the slightly exaggerated efficiency of someone who has spent the previous two hours in the British Airways firstass lounge and who has taken full advantage of the complimentary bar.

Richard Ashton worked in investment banking in the city of London, and he had been in New York for a difficult week of meetings that had not gone as well as he had needed them to go, and the lounge bar had been the appropriate response to the kind of week it had been, and the glass of scotch in the lounge had become two, and the two had become three.

And by the time flight 178 was boarding, he had achieved the specific state of a man who is not drunk in any way that would cause the cabin crew to refuse him boarding, but who is sufficiently removed from his ordinary judgment that the restraints his ordinary judgment places on his behavior have become temporarily more permeable than usual. He sat down.

He looked at the man in the window seat. The assessment was quicker than it would have been sober. The conclusions more certain. Jeans, old jacket, hat pulled down, musical scribbling in a notebook. The man had asked for water. Ashton had ordered whiskey and had watched the water being delivered with the mild contempt of someone in a particular state. He said nothing immediately.

He opened his briefcase with the slightly imprecise coordination of someone whose fine motor control has been modestly compromised and he removed papers and he looked at them without fully reading them and the whiskey arrived and he drank it. The papers blurred slightly. He sat them down.

He looked at the man in the window seat again. The view he had formed had not changed. If anything, it had solidified. The way views solidify when alcohol removes the friction of doubt. First class isn’t what it used to be, he said at a volume that was slightly louder than he intended. Standards have changed. Anyone can end up here now.

The man in the window seat did not react. Ashton continued with the specific momentum that alcohol lends to thoughts that would otherwise have been left unspoken. I’ve spent 30 years building my position. Every flight at this level represents something I’ve earned. He paused. The pause had the quality of a pause in which a person is deciding whether to continue and decides to continue.

Some people simply find themselves here. The man in the window seat removed one earphone. He looked at Ashton with the full and complete attention of someone who has heard something and is deciding how to respond to it. “Are you talking to me?” he said. A general observation, Ashton said. I see.

The man replaced the earphone and returned to his notebook. Ashton looked at the notebook. The notation continued line by line. Unhurried, he finished his champagne. The cabin crew came through and he indicated he would like another. When it arrived, he held the glass and looked at the man beside him and continued to hold the view he had formed.

The people who’ve actually built something, he said at the same carrying volume, tend to understand what they’re sitting in. There’s a certain respect for the level. Not everyone has it. In the seat across the aisle, one row forward, a young man named Marcus Webb had been wearing his Walkman since boarding and had recognized the man in the window seat within 10 minutes of takeoff because he had been studying Led Zeppelin’s recordings for 2 years with the specific attention of a music student who is trying to understand technically what he is hearing and faces studied that closely become recognizable even in the reduced lighting of a transatlantic nightflight with a hat pulled down. He had not said anything. The man was working. And then the man beside him had begun speaking in the way that Marcus had been taught to recognize by the quality of his parents’ silences in certain situations as the kind of speaking that decent people don’t do. He

waited through the first remark. He waited through the second. When the third arrived, he made a decision. “Excuse me,” Marcus said, leaning across the aisle. He was addressing Ashton. Ashton turned. “Do you know who you’re sitting next to?” Marcus said. “I don’t see how that’s that’s Jimmy Paige,” Marcus said. Ashton looked at him.

He looked at the man in the window seat who had one earphone out and was watching this exchange with the patience of someone who has watched this kind of exchange before and who has no particular investment in how it resolves. Then Ashton looked at Marcus again. Led Zeppelin, Marcus said. He wrote Stairway to Heaven.

Whole lot of love, Cashmir. He’s one of the greatest guitarists who has ever lived. Ashton produced his phone with the efficiency of someone who verifies claims before accepting them. He searched. He read. The specific quality of stillness that settled over him as he read was the stillness of someone whose understanding of the recent past is being reorganized by the information in front of them.

When he looked up, his face had changed. “I didn’t recognize you,” he said. His voice had lost the carrying quality it had carried across the previous exchanges. “It was simply his voice now without the performance. You look very different from your photographs. Jimmy Paige looked at him with the expression of someone who is not particularly interested in what they are being told but who is willing to hear it out.

Do I more? Ashton searched for the word ordinary. I am ordinary. Jimmy said he said it the way you say something that is simply true and that you have no need to make into a demonstration. Then he put the earphone back in. The first class cabin had the specific quality of a space in which something has happened that everyone is aware of and no one is addressing directly.

The cabin crew member in the forward galley had her back turned with the careful deliberateness of someone who has decided that discretion is the correct posture. A woman two rows back had her face angled toward the window in a way that suggested she was listening. A man across the aisle was reading the same page he had been reading for the past several minutes.

Ashton sat with his hands on the armrests. He had said something that he would not have said if he had known who he was saying it to, which was a thought that was uncomfortable, not because it was unusual for him to do things in ignorance, that he would not do in knowledge, but because the specific thing he had said had been about belonging, about who earned their place, and who simply found themselves somewhere, and the person he had said it to had, in some measurable and documented sense, earned their position at a level that Ashton ‘s 30 years in finance had not approached. This was uncomfortable. But it was not, he understood, the most uncomfortable part. The most uncomfortable part was the simpler thought. The thought that arrived after the discomfort of the recognition, which was that he had looked at a person for 4 seconds and formed a judgment and expressed that judgment in a way that was designed to

be heard, and that the judgment had been wrong in a way that had nothing to do with who the person turned out to be. The judgment had been wrong because it was the kind of judgment that shouldn’t be made. and the fact that it happened to be wrong about someone specific didn’t address the fact that it was wrong in principle.

Ashton sat with his hands on the armrests and looked at nothing in particular. He had said something that he would not have said sober. That was one part of the truth, the easier part, the part that attributed the specific utterance to three whisies in the BA lounge at JFK and the loosening of judgment that three whisies produce.

But he was, under the whiskies, and the embarrassment, a precise man, and the precision required him to follow the thought further. The whisies had removed the restraint that would normally have kept the thought private. They had not created the thought. The thought had been there before the first whiskey, in the 4-se secondond assessment at boarding, in the quick, confident reading of a person from insufficient information.

The alcohol had simply made what was normally interior into something exterior. It had taken what was usually a private judgment and given it a voice. This was the more uncomfortable part of what needed to be understood. He sat with this for approximately an hour, long enough for the cabin to settle into the deeper quiet of a flight past its midpoint.

long enough for the champagne to be cleared and for the meal service to conclude and for the lights to dim and for the other passengers to arrange themselves for sleep or continued work. Then he said, “Mr. Paige,” the earphone came out. Jimmy looked at him. “I want to apologize properly,” Ashton said. His voice had the quality of someone who has sobered, not fully, but enough.

the specific sobriety that certain kinds of embarrassment produce, regardless of how much alcohol remains in the system. Not because I know who you are. That’s not the reason, he paused. I had a difficult week. I had a few drinks in the lounge. Neither of those things is an excuse. I’m telling you because I want you to know I’m aware of it.

He looked at the tray table. What I said was wrong. It would have been wrong sober. It was worse drunk. and it would have been wrong regardless of who you were sitting there. Jimmy looked at him steadily. I make quick judgments, Ashton said. In my field, it’s necessary or I’ve told myself it’s necessary. I look at something quickly and I decide what it is. He looked at the tray table.

I was wrong today. About what exactly? Jimmy said. Ashton considered this. about what a person’s appearance tells you about their value. He said, “Yes,” Jimmy said. “I changed when I found out who you were.” Ashton said, “Before that, I was behaving as if you didn’t belong here. Then I found out who you were, and I felt embarrassed, but the embarrassment was the wrong response.

” “Why?” Jimmy said. He asked it with the quality of someone who knows the answer and is interested in whether the other person has found it. Because the embarrassment was about being wrong about a specific person, Ashton said, not about being the kind of person who makes that judgment in the first place. Yes, Jimmy said again.

I’m sorry, Ashton said. For the right reasons this time. Jimmy looked at him for a moment. We all make quick judgments, he said. The question is what you do when you realize the judgment was wrong. He paused. You’re doing the right thing. He replaced the earphone, not dismissively.

The conversation had been what it needed to be and was complete. Marcus Webb came across the aisle approximately an hour later when the cabin had settled into the deeper quiet of a flight past its midpoint, and the light had been reduced, and most of the passengers had made their arrangements for the remaining hours.

He stopped beside the seat with the specific quality of someone who has decided to do something and has committed to it fully past the point at which second-guing is useful. He was holding a small notebook. Not the Walkman case or a program or a scrap of paper, but the notebook in which he kept the technical observations he made while studying recordings, the harmonic analyses and the fingering notes and the questions he had not yet been able to answer about why certain things worked the way they worked. “Mr. Paige,” he said quietly, “I’m sorry to interrupt. I wanted to thank you for what you said earlier and for not making more of the situation than it was, and I wanted to ask something. Jimmy looked at him. Would you sign this?” Marcus held out the notebook, not a separate page, just wherever there’s space. I’d like it to be part of the same notes. Is that

strange? No, Jimmy said. He took the notebook and turned a few pages. He looked at what was in it. The real content, the analyses, the questions in the margins, the specific kind of engagement with music that is recognizable to anyone who has spent time in the same engagement. He turned to a page that had space at the bottom.

And he wrote his name and then paused and thought for a moment and wrote something beneath it. He handed the notebook back. Marcus read what was written. The technique is a vehicle. The music is the destination. Keep driving, JP. He looked up. His face had the expression of someone who has been given something they were not expecting and who is taking a moment before responding because the response deserves more than the first thing that comes to them.

Thank you, he said. That’s thank you. Keep playing, Jimmy said. Don’t stop when it gets hard. It always gets hard. The getting hard is how you know you’re going somewhere. Marcus nodded. He returned to his seat. He looked at the notebook for the rest of the flight. Ashton had watched the exchange from 3 ft away.

He had watched the way Jimmy took the notebook and looked at what was in it before signing it. The attention given to the actual content rather than to the act of signing. He had watched the sentence written beneath the signature. He had watched Marcus’s face when he read it. He had spent 30 years building his position.

The thought that had come to him on the other side of the recognition was returning now with more clarity, which was that what he had spent 30 years building was a position. And what the man in the window seat had spent 30 years building was something else, something that people carried notebooks onto planes to be close to, something that a young musician would ask to have signed, not on a separate page, but as part of his own working notes, because he wanted it to be part of the same thing.

These were not the same kind of building. Before the descent into Heathrow, Ashton extended his hand. Jimmy looked at it and then at Ashton. I learned something today, Ashton said. I wanted you to know that. Jimmy shook his hand. Good, he said. And then try to remember it. The learning part is easy.

It’s the remembering that’s difficult. He looked at Ashton steadily for a moment, not unkindly, with the specific directness of someone who means what they say and has no interest in softening it. Then he turned back to the window and the descent. The first class cabin produced the quiet collective response of people who have been present for something and who are acknowledging it without making a formal acknowledgement of it.

A cabin crew member who had been managing the galley throughout the flight, looked at no one in particular, and allowed herself a small expression that lasted approximately half a second. At Heithro, Jimmy moved through the terminal the way he always moved through places when he was not required to be anything specific, unhurried and unannounced.

The hat still on, the jacket still the jacket. He collected his bag from the carousel alongside the other passengers from the flight and found a position to wait in. And while he was waiting, a boy of perhaps 10 years old approached with the specific determination of a child who has decided to do something and has committed to it past the point of turning back.

His parents were several feet behind, watching with the expressions of parents who have allowed something to happen and are prepared for whatever results. The boy was holding a small notebook, an airport one purchased perhaps in the terminal shop with a plain cover and clean pages. “Are you Jimmy Paige?” he said.

Jimmy looked at him. “Yes,” he said. The boy held out the notebook. Jimmy took it. He signed his name on the first page and then paused and wrote three words beneath. “Keep playing always.” He handed it back. The boy looked at what was written. He looked up. Thank you, he said with the seriousness of someone for whom the moment is the most significant thing that has happened today and possibly this week.

You’re welcome, Jimmy said. He found his car and was driven from Heithro into the city which had arrived in the six weeks he had been away at the specific bare clarity of November. Every tree stripped and the buildings visible in all their detail with nothing left to soften them. Ashton’s car was also waiting.

In the back seat, with the city moving past the window, he was thinking about the sentence he had heard written into a notebook. The technique is a vehicle. The music is the destination. He was a man who had spent 30 years building a position. He was thinking about the difference between a position and a destination.

He was thinking about the 4 seconds at boarding and the judgment they had produced and the specific quality of the embarrassment that had followed the recognition and the thing Jimmy had said about it. The embarrassment was about the specific person, not about the kind of judgment. Those are different mistakes.

He thought about this for a long time. Marcus Webb flew to Leeds and went directly from the airport to the room where his guitar was waiting. He played for 2 hours without stopping, the way he played when something had happened that needed to go somewhere. He looked at the signed notebook on the desk beside him.

He played for another hour. In 2010, a music publication ran a profile on Marcus Webb as part of a series on emerging composers and guitarists. The interviewer asked about the most significant moment in his development as a musician. He described a flight New York to London, he said. November 1977. He said he had been sitting across the aisle from Jimmy Page and had asked for a signature.

What did he write? The interviewer asked. Marcus told them. The technique is a vehicle. The music is the destination. The interviewer asked if he still had the notebook. Yes, Marcus said. I still have it. I look at it when I need to remember why I started. And why did you start? Marcus thought about this.

Because the music is the destination, he said. That’s why anyone starts. You just sometimes forget and then you find something that reminds you. He paused. That’s what he wrote. That’s what it does. Jimmy Page in the years and decades that followed said nothing specifically about the flight and nothing specifically about Richard Ashton and nothing specifically about Marcus Webb or the signed notebook.

He did not speak about the hours over the Atlantic or the conversation in the forward aisle or the boy in the arrivals hall. These things existed in the register of things he did not speak about which was the register where most of the things that mattered to him personally resided. What he said in interviews across those years when the subject of advice to young musicians arose was consistent.

Technique is not the point. He would say it never was. The point is what you’re trying to say. The technique is just how you say it. Don’t confuse the vehicle for the destination. He said it many times. He said it the way you say things that you believe completely and that you have found through the years of believing them to be simply and persistently true.

He said it first in those precise words on a November night over the Atlantic in a notebook belonging to a young guitarist from Leeds who had asked for an autograph and had been told to keep driving. Marcus Webb kept driving. He is still driving. Some lessons when they find you in the right moment last that long. Ashton’s car was also waiting.

He sat in the back seat with the city moving past the window and thought about the sentence he had heard written into a notebook. The technique is a vehicle. The music is the destination. He thought about the difference between a vehicle and a destination. He thought about 30 years of building a position and about what a position is exactly and whether position and destination are the same word for the same thing or whether they describe different orientations toward what a life is for. He had been wrong at boarding. He had been wrong in a way that went deeper than the specific error, deeper than the mistaken identity, deeper than the embarrassment of the recognition. He had been wrong in the way that people are wrong when they have confused the vehicle for the destination so completely that they have forgotten there is a destination at all. When they have started to believe that the level they have achieved is the

point rather than the vehicle by which the point might be reached. He thought about this for a long time. Marcus Webb flew to Leads and was in his room with his guitar within an hour of landing. He played for 2 hours without stopping. the way he played. When something needed to be processed through the instrument rather than through thought, the notebook was on the desk.

He looked at it between pieces and then looked away and played. In 2010, a music publication ran a profile. The interviewer asked about the most significant moment in his development as a musician. A flight, Marcus said. New York to London, November 1977. He described what had happened. He described the notebook and the sentence.

Do you still have it? The interviewer asked. Yes, Marcus said. I look at it when I need to remember why I started. And why did you start? Marcus thought about this with the patience the question deserved. Because the music is the destination, he said. That’s why anyone starts. You just sometimes forget and then something finds you that reminds you. He paused.

That night on the plane, he said, “That’s what found me.” Jimmy Paige said nothing about the flight. He said nothing about Richard Ashton or Marcus Webb or the boy in the arrivals hall. These things existed in the register where he kept the things that mattered personally, which was the register that did not produce interviews.

what he said consistently across the years when the subject of music and craft and what separates the technical from the genuine arose in conversation was this technique is not the point. It never was. The technique is how you say what you’re trying to say. Don’t confuse the vehicle for the destination.

He said it many times. He said it as someone who believes something completely and has found it to be true across the full length of their experience. He said it first in those exact words over the Atlantic on a November night in a notebook belonging to a young musician who had asked for a signature and been told to keep driving.

Marcus Webb is still driving. Some things when they find you at the right moment last that