The Record Store Years (Side Trip): Launching Proximity Led Zeppelin Newspaper, Part One

A memoir of 25 years (1975-2000) spent working in the world of records & music in Seattle, with occasional side trips into writings on Led Zeppelin and other adventures from my musical life.

Following the Zep-crazy summer of 1977 when the bulk of my collection was on show in an elaborate window display at Cellophane Square, my reputation and activities as a Zeppelin collector grew exponentially. In the process I established contact with people around the world for trading and correspondence, and one of those people was Claudia Chapman, who started the first U.S. Zep fanzine Pure Blues in late 1978. Claudia was an avid collector and an excellent writer, and the ‘zine had a decent run for a few years. It played a big part in fueling Zeppelin collecting fever all over the world, and though I was an occasional contributor to the publication I never really considered starting one of my own, especially since I felt she was doing such a good job with hers.

The disastrous end of Zeppelin’s 1977 tour had put them out of commission for a while, and when they came back in mid-1979 with the In Through The Out Door album and two mammoth U.K. concerts at the Knebworth Festival, ‘Zeppelin fever’ came back with a vengeance. Right around this time a young woman named Juli LeCompte came into the U-district store and asked to speak to me. Juli was about 16 years old and still in high school, and when I came out of the back room to meet her she explained that she wanted to start a Led Zeppelin fan publication, and wondered if I would be willing to get involved.

I can’t recall for certain, but I think it may have been related to a school project for her, and she explained that she had magazine production experience, a budget and access to printing facilities but needed someone to contribute expertise, written content, and images of the band. She was articulate, pretty and slightly flirtatious, and I was charmed into saying ‘yes’ on the condition that my name not be used, at least in the first issue. She agreed to this and together we came up with the pseudonym “Nick Patrix”, a conflagration of Nick Lowe (she was also a Rockpile fan, another point in her favor) and James Patrick Page.

Though she loved the music Juli didn’t really know a whole lot about Led Zeppelin, however she was also a good writer and in the first issue penned an interesting piece about how the band’s album covers represented their music, and a biography of Robert Plant. My biggest contribution to the issue was a handful of photographs from my collection and a Nick Patrix-penned bootleg discography, which unsurprisingly became the most popular feature in the issue and generated a lot of mail and feedback from other collectors.

What Juli did know a lot about was the production end of things. In those pre-computer days everything was done manually as hard copy ‘paste-up boards’ (aka ‘mechanicals’) using razor blades, hot wax, and non-photo blue pencil. She took the type-written copy I gave her and had it professionally typeset, and had the photos I provided half-toned and sized to paste into the layouts – each image manually ‘boxed’ with a fine black edge and appropriately captioned, though often un-credited. The headlines were created in various point sizes with a product known as “PresType,” pressure-sensitive lettering painstakingly burnished down onto the paste-up boards from a waxed backing, letter by letter. The publication was offset-printed and the end product was a very professional-looking 11 by 17-inch folded newspaper format. When she brought the first batch of freshly-printed ‘zines into Cellophane in January 1980 I have to admit I was pretty impressed.

Above left to right: The first issue, January 1980; the issue following John Bonham’s death, October 1980; the last issue with Juli LeCompte, October 1981.

The other thing Juli was good at was self-promotion, and she had chutzpah to spare. Over the 8-issue run of the original Proximity – which was named by Juli as a reference to getting closer to the band - she connected with famous photographer Neal Preston, UK fan and Zep bio author Howard Mylett, Pure Blues publisher Claudia Chapman, and some of the earliest serious Zep collectors like Brian Knapp, Stuart Whitehead and Dave Lewis. Photographer (and then-Cellophane Square employee) Marty Perez also contributed a good bit to Proximity, and Juli got local rock radio station KZOK FM to pay for a few display ads and got the attention of popular local DJ Steve Slaton – a great guy and Zep fan - who was quick to promote our endeavor. Eventually she even managed to land a sugar daddy to help finance the publication going forward after the first few issues - I never met him but from what she told me he was an older man taken in by her feminine wiles. I never asked for details.

I personally benefited greatly from these connections, establishing trading relationships with Mylett, Lewis and Knapp in particular that enhanced all our collections – and the contents of Proximity – with clippings, photos and recordings going back and forth between Seattle and various locations in the UK and USA during the life of the fanzine, and for many years beyond that.

After Juli proved herself with the success of the first issue, I agreed to have my name credited in the subsequent issues, though ‘Nick Patrix’ remained a contributor to make it look like we had a bigger staff. My masthead credits as Hugh Jones evolved from “Writer and Contributor” to “Consultant, Contributor and Assistant Editor” and ultimately to “Noble Assistant.”

Juli and I became good friends and collaborators, working on layouts and marathon paste-up sessions together, and we produced eight different issues in the same newspaper format as the first one between January 1980 and October 1981. My contributions were generally the more collector-oriented pieces such as “Rare Zeppelin Collectibles,” “Songbooks & Sheet Music,” “Led Zeppelin Samplers Discography” and such, as well as several addendums to the Bootleg Discography. I also indulged my Zep-related obsessions with lengthy pieces about The Yardbirds and Page’s session work in the ‘60s. We had some outside contributors occasionally, and throughout every issue there were outstanding photos, many previously unseen and always a popular feature with readers.

Juli handled subscriptions and I have no idea what the circulation was at its peak, though I know she never made a penny on it. However due to the economics of offset printing - the more copies produced the cheaper it is per copy - she had at least a thousand copies of each issue printed. I contributed to circulation as much as I could by selling and promoting the ‘zine heavily at the two Cellophane Square stores (U-District and Bellingham at the time), and by placing paid display ads for the record store in several issues. The fanzine was popular and sold well, but predictably enough we ended up with hundreds of unsold copies, most of which spent a few decades boxed up in my attic, and now can be found for sale on Ebay by Goodwill thanks to my generous donation in a marathon spring-cleaning a few years ago.

We kept going for almost a year following John Bonham’s death in September 1980 and even upgraded from newsprint to a coated paper stock for a couple of the final issues, but ultimately Juli lost interest and financing and I became much busier as regional manager of the record stores, not to mention getting married and started a family. I did produce a ninth issue by myself on an IBM Selectric typewriter in the spring of 1983 with financing from a local Zep fan who wanted to see the publication keep going. That issue (v3 n1) featured coverage of the Coda album and a discography of foreign picture sleeve singles and was quite popular, but it proved to be the last issue of the original ‘zine. I created one more issue for Fall/Winter 1983 but it never came out, as my financier apparently developed some issues with cocaine and failed to come through with the printing costs at the eleventh hour. Most of the contents of that 10^th issue ended up becoming the first issue of the resurrected, desktop-published version of Proximity in 1993 – but that’s a story for a future ‘Side Trip.’

Above left to right: The first issue without Juli LeCompte, spring 1983; the second issue without Juli (unreleased); the first issue of the resurrected ‘zine’ format, July 1993.

Juli and I lost touch with each other in the early ‘80s, and I’m sure she forged a path for herself in whatever direction she took – the woman was a force of nature! A memorable example of her extraordinary chutzpah was a trip she took to the United Kingdom in June 1981. She was determined to meet Jimmy Page and Robert Plant, and with some help from the locals she figured out where they lived and made initial, friendly contact with Robert Plant’s wife at his Jennings Farm property in Kidderminster. Robert was away in London at the time, but she returned a few days later and did end up with a 20 minute ‘interview’ with the Golden God, plus a few snapshots.

Robert suggested she visit Jimmy Page at his home in Windsor, and upon arriving there she attempted contact through a security guard manning the front gate of the estate. After getting no response and waiting around for a few hours, she unfortunately chose to take the uninvited-fan-on-the-property approach and slipped inside the gate when the guard stepped away for a few minutes. Understandably Mr. Page was furious, bursting forth from the house and ordering her off his property in no uncertain terms. Juli attempted to defend herself and a shouting match ensued, resulting in her forcible removal by an assistant.

The more positive encounter with Mr. Plant was duly reported in her last issue of Proximity along with a couple of the photos she took, and Juli left the U.K. having had a firsthand glimpse of the divergent personalities of two of the world’s biggest rock stars. Lesson learned: Be careful what you wish for!

NEXT: Telepaths, Chatterbox and The Music Scene Before Grunge

Below: From the last issue with Juli, October 1981; letter from the editor and masthead (left), and article about her encounter with Robert Plant including her photos (right).