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All My Love: A Fictional Tribute
I still hear his sweet little laugh in the quiet moments—those hushed, breath-held hours just before dawn when the house is still, the world asleep, and the ghosts come closest. That laugh, bright and careless, used to echo through hallways now full of silence. And sometimes, I swear it’s the only thing that keeps me going.
Grief doesn’t always scream. Sometimes it sings.
It sings in a falsetto whisper, rides the chord of a minor key, and stirs something aching and endless inside the chest. It doesn’t arrive in black veils and funeral drums. Sometimes, it shows up backstage, minutes before a performance, pressing its cold hand on your back as you lace up your boots.
In the summer of 1980, the sky over Europe burned amber and gold, like it couldn’t decide whether to set or blaze on forever. It was Led Zeppelin’s final tour, though none of us knew that then—not really. The band was older. Not in years, perhaps, but in miles. We’d chased fame across continents, across hotel lobbies and runways, leaving parts of ourselves scattered like breadcrumbs behind us.
I was different now.
Two years earlier, in 1977, I’d buried my five-year-old son, Karac. A sudden illness. A fever that flared and raged and, before I could even grasp what was happening, took him. My golden-haired boy. I never understood how the world didn’t stop spinning after that.
Everything became quieter. Even the noise on stage. Even the applause.
“All My Love” began as a whisper in the back of my throat, on a cold morning in the studio when the grief felt like wet cement hardening inside me. I hadn’t planned to write it. I didn’t even know I could write anything again. But John Paul Jones played this melody—melancholy and strangely triumphant—and suddenly, I saw Karac’s face, smiling, maybe even laughing, and the words came.
I didn’t write that song for the charts.
I wrote it for the little boy who never got the chance to grow up.
—
The tour rolled into Munich in July. The beer halls were bustling, the girls wore wild eyes and feathered hair, and the fans—God, the fans—still screamed like it was 1973. But something had shifted. Bonzo’s drinking was worse. Jimmy was thinner than ever, a ghost behind sunglasses. Even Jonesy, stoic as ever, seemed to carry some quiet resignation in his shoulders.
And me—I was just trying to breathe without breaking.
“All My Love” was scheduled for the third act of the show. Always the third act. Right after “No Quarter,” right before “Stairway.” I dreaded it and needed it all at once. Some nights I closed my eyes and imagined Karac sitting in the front row, kicking his legs, smiling that wide, gap-toothed smile. Other nights, I couldn’t sing the second verse without turning my back to the crowd, teeth clenched to keep the sob inside.
I don’t remember much about the Munich show itself. The usual thunder. Bonham hammering the world into shape. Page coaxing fire from strings. The way the lights felt like stars falling down around us.
But I remember that song.
“All of my love, all of my love, all of my love to you, now…”
The moment those words left my mouth, the world narrowed. The crowd disappeared. The stage fell away. There was only one face. One laugh. One boy I couldn’t hold anymore.
The band played on. My voice cracked somewhere between verses, but no one noticed—or they were kind enough to pretend they didn’t. Jonesy looked over once, a flicker of something in his eyes. Maybe sorrow. Maybe solidarity. Maybe both.
I turned slightly, just a fraction, so the spotlight wouldn’t catch the wetness pooling in my eyes.
Because even rock gods cry.
—
Later that night, I sat alone in my hotel room. No groupies. No whiskey. Just an old photo of Karac, the one I always carried with me, tucked inside my passport. He was laughing in it, probably at something silly I’d said, his curls bouncing in the wind. It had been taken in the garden behind our home in Kidderminster. The sun had caught the light in his hair just right. He looked like something made of gold and joy.
I pressed the photo to my lips, then to my heart, and whispered the song again. Slower this time. Barely a breath.
“All of my love… all of my love…”
A knock at the door broke the spell.
Bonham stood there, swaying slightly, a bottle dangling from one hand. “You alright, mate?”
I nodded, though I wasn’t sure if I meant it.
He didn’t ask to come in. Just stood there, staring at me for a long moment, his eyes unusually sober.
“I miss him too,” he said quietly, and for the first time in years, I believed he wasn’t just talking about Karac. We were all losing something.
We all had ghosts.
—
A few weeks later, Bonham was dead.
Alcohol, asphyxiation, silence.
Zeppelin dissolved with him, like smoke in a cold wind. No one had the stomach to carry on. Not without him. Not with so many shadows clinging to every note.
The press asked for statements. The fans mourned. And I—I sat in my garden in Kidderminster, staring at the same patch of grass where Karac used to run barefoot, arms wide, chasing butterflies and dreams.
I didn’t sing for a long time after that.
Didn’t write.
Didn’t speak much either.
The grief hardened. Not into bitterness, but into something quieter. A kind of weathered reverence. I started visiting his grave more often. Planted daffodils. Told him stories. Sometimes I played him music, headphones placed gently against the cool stone. I told myself he could still hear it, somewhere, somehow.
Maybe that’s a father’s madness.
Maybe it’s a kind of faith.
—
Years passed. The world moved on, as it always does. Vinyl gave way to CDs, and CDs to mp3s. Bands came and went. But every so often, someone would ask me about All My Love. In interviews, in letters, in whispers after shows.
They always said the same thing.
“That song… it saved me.”
They told me about brothers lost to accidents. Sons buried too young. Mothers who died with lullabies still on their lips. Somehow, that song had become a vessel for all that grief. Not just mine. Everyone’s.
And maybe that’s the point of art.
Not to shine, but to carry. To shoulder what we cannot bear alone.
—
In 2007, we did a reunion show at the O2 Arena. Just one night. For Bonzo. For the fans. For the ghosts.
Jason Bonham, his son, sat behind the drums. He didn’t try to be his father—he just played like himself. But there were moments, fleeting and electric, where it felt like John was in the room. In the thunder of the toms. In the swing of the sticks.
We played All My Love as the encore.
And for the first time in decades, I sang it without breaking.
Not because the pain was gone. It never is. But because time had wrapped it in something warmer. Not healing, exactly—but understanding. Acceptance. A kind of peace.
As the final notes faded, I looked out at the crowd—thousands of strangers singing along—and I thought of Karac. Of what he’d be like now. Maybe taller than me. Maybe a musician himself. Maybe just a man with a quiet laugh and golden curls.
I didn’t cry.
I smiled.
—
There’s a line in the song—“Yours is the cloth, mine is the hand that sews time.” I didn’t understand it when I wrote it. It just sounded poetic, mysterious. But now, I think I do.
He was the fabric of something holy. And me—I was just trying to stitch the days together, one performance, one breath, one memory at a time.
Even now, when the night is long and the silence deeper than I can bear, I hear his laugh.
And sometimes, that’s the only thing that keeps me going.
All my love. Always.
