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[kenog]

Just say no to nostalgia, says Robert Plant on new album

Peter Howell TORONTO STAR. Toronto Star [Toronto, Ont] 26 May 1993

"Life is a big tambourine," sings rocker Robert Plant in a song on Fate Of Nations, his new album on sale tomorrow.

"The more that you shake it, the better it seems."

Consider it the personal life motto for the witty and urbane former Led Zeppelin singer - and remember that a tambourine swings in two directions.

So it's hardly surprising to hear the 44-year-old Plant on the one hand criticizing middle-aged rock stars who rehash past glories, while on the other offering soothing words of support for his former partner Jimmy Page, who just happens to be reliving Led Zep in a big way.

Still hoping for an official Led Zep reunion, instead of the tantalizing one-off shows like 1985's Live Aid gig? After drummer John Bonham died in 1980, the band quietly broke up, and despite guitarist Page's desire to relive the hard-rock thunder of the premier 1970s stadium touring act, Plant still wants none of it.

"We meet divided/We had our day," Plant sings in new tune "Memory Song", and he agrees it is a succinct way to describe his resistance to the return of Led Zep. "I just see a lot of people around me who have taken the easy way out," Plant says from a video recording studio somewhere in England.

"Some people call it 'legendary status' but you see all of these bands that re-form staggering around the world, selling gross T- shirts, followed by a troupe of accountants and sycophants. And sometimes I think to myself, 'Well, boys, I think it would be better to do 'Stand By Your Man' in a truck stop, really.' " That's a long way of saying "no way" to Zeppelin, and it would seem to also point the finger of shame at Page's new Coverdale-Page album collaboration with Plant soundalike David Coverdale, formerly of the Zep-adoring band Whitesnake. The album sounds like a lost Zeppelin record, and classic rock radio is in a feeding frenzy for it.

"Well, I don't know," Plant says, trying to dodge the bullet. "I want Jimmy to do whatever he can to have a groove - it's his career. He's a fantastic guitar player. Whatever he wants to do, he should do and enjoy it. . . On his record, his playing sounds great."

Okay, but what does Plant really think?

"It's quite a quizzical situation, really," he replies. "Having worked with Jimmy for so long, it makes me wonder whether or not he could have tried a little bit harder (to sound like Led Zeppelin) or a little bit less hard."

And while Plant's album will be competing with Coverdale-Page for the affections of Zepheads, he'll also soon be competing with himself. Another Zeppelin boxed set is on its way, using the rest of the tracks that weren't included in the monster-selling first set released in 1990.

There's a bonus unreleased song called "Baby Come On Home", a bluesy number that was originally intended for the band's eponymous debut in 1969, but which was left off the album. How does Plant feel about it surfacing now?

"I guess if it sounds better, that's okay," he says. "But the track itself was found in a skid outside a recording studio, when the recording studio was sold. Somebody threw out all the tapes, and there were tapes by The Who in there, too.

"That's where it came from, it's from that period, but it's no 'Dazed And Confused'. " Plant doesn't mind revisiting his Zeppelin past - in fact, he recently recorded an acoustic B-side of the Zep anthem "Whole Lotta Love," a song he's also performing in concert - but his new music takes him even further back, to his pre-Zeppelin days.

Fate Of Nations, which Plant describes as "my most dignified record," was born of his desire to explore favorite artists of the mid-'60s, including his own Band Of Joy group with Bonham and such contemporaries as folk singer Tim Hardin and psychedelic rock outfits Moby Grape and Jefferson Airplane.

"I'm trying to create some kind of ambiguous lyrical thread throughout this sort of more hippy-fied, eastern/north African- influenced music," Plant explains - in a manner of speaking.

"My intention is to become more Celt, more Moroccan and more 'baby-baby' as time goes on."

That last bit about the baby explains why the late Tim Hardin's folk chestnut "If I Was A Carpenter" is covered by Plant on Fate Of Nations.

He's just become a new dad again with the arrival of a baby son, and "this is the vibe I'm coming from," he says.

"You know, I know a lot of things now, but that doesn't mean I don't feel the need to be gentle and loving and to give and receive affection. A song like 'Carpenter' is the kind of a song that shows humility. It's a beautiful song, written by a man who wrote so many beautiful songs."

So has Plant, for that matter, and one of his most interesting projects at the moment is a TV special for broadcast later this year that will dramatically illustrate the inspiration for his song lyrics. It's a world tour that will show viewers exactly where such Led Zep songs as "Kashmir" and "Achilles' Last Stand" came from.

He'll also be touring himself, with a Toronto appearance likely in October or November.

"Hey yeah, it will be great," Plant says, in his jaunty style. "I come to America about Oct. 1 for a fall tour and go right the way through, stand on my head, get married in Wisconsin, buy a '72 Riviera boattail (car) and then implode."

Edited June 9, 2013 by kenog

[kenog]

THEY MAY BE AGING, BUT THEY'RE NEVER TOO OLD TO ROCK 'N' ROLL

Agassi, Tirzah. Jerusalem Post [Jerusalem] 31 May 1993

NEW RELEASES

IT may not be Mozart, but hard rock will never die. And some hard rockers even seem to be surviving middle age.

Coverdale-Page is a hard rock duo made up of 49-year-old Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, and the 41-year-old lead vocalist from Deep Purple and Whitesnake, David Coverdale.

Although the album Coverdale-Page (Hed-Artzi) contains no "Stairway to Heaven," it does sound believable. Page means what he plays and Coverdale - for all his vocal breast-beating - comes across as authentic. The album's musings may not be the deepest, but it's a solidly energetic chronicle of lives that - for better or worse - have been raunchily lived.

Edited June 9, 2013 by kenog

[kenog]

Plant dabbles in psychedelia

Saxberg, Lynn. The Ottawa Citizen [Ottawa, Ont] 19 June 1993

Fate of Nations (Es Paranza/Warner 92264)

It's hard for any Robert Plant album not to sound like a Led Zeppelin one. After all, the singer's distinctive soaring vocals were the signature sound of the legendary British band.

At first listen, Plant's latest solo disc seems like a rehash of the Zep legacy, and it's not just because of the voice. It's got the multi-layered guitars, both acoustic and electric, and a slightly spacey feel that comes from dabbling in psychedelia and world music.

But Fate of Nations is a kinder and gentler disc than you might expect, perhaps reflecting Plant's state of mind at the recent birth of his child. He includes Tim Hardin's tender folk classic, If I Were A Carpenter , the only cover song on the album, as well as two sweet ballads of his own, The Greatest Gift and Great Spirit , an environmentally conscious tune that contains the album's title in its lyrics.

Edited June 9, 2013 by kenog

[kenog]

Non-stop mediocrity doesn't deserve an album title like this

The Vancouver Sun [Vancouver, B.C] 24 June 1993

Robert Plant

Fate of Nations

Warner****

Who'd believe our Percy would be the one showing his contemporaries how to age gracefully? Compared to Jimmy Page's cringe-making faux-Zep endeavour with David Coverdale - who really is a bit gumperish for that sort of thing - Plant's latest is, well, mature; trousers unsausaged and weighty matters on his mind.

The opening Calling to You is familiar territory, all raga-riffs and Kashmirish guitar grindings (a tip of the hat to Tom Verlaine), Bonzo-like stuttering drums and guest Nigel Kennedy's dervish violin scrapings in counterpoint. The Eastern motif continues with Down to the Sea - tabla, triangle, and archetypical Plant couplet Life is a big tambourine, the more you shake it the better it seems.

Leaving the mystical, Come Into My Life features some beautiful Richard Thompson guitar, I Believe is guitar-pop of an umptempo Sundays nature and Tim Hardin's If I Were a Carpenter is rendered straight with mandolin and a '60s BBC string arrangement.

All told, this is what Led Zeppelin might have become, an impressive display of power and delicacy without the appendage-waggling unsuitable to those in their mid-40s. Sadly, Page must get the impression listening to this that he's been waiting at the wrong bus stop all this time.

- John Armstrong

[kenog]

The hardy perennial;Robert Plant

Sinclair, David. The Times [London (UK)] 19 July 1993

David Sinclair enjoys a fine show by singer Robert Plant As the film Jurassic Park makes abundantly clear, not all dinosaurs were slow and lumbering. Some of them were lithe and able to move at considerable speed. By the same token, it's a mistake to tar Robert Plant with the brush that has been applied to many of his equally long-lived but less quick-witted contemporaries.

For the plain fact is that since the demise of Led Zeppelin in 1980, Plant has put out a succession of consistently alert albums. The most recent of these, Fate Of Nations, would doubtless appeal to any number of people whose dismissal of the flaxen-haired singer and all he stands for is little more than a reflex action.

With his trademark curls, lean physique and high, powerful voice all conspicuously intact, the 44-year-old Plant looked and sounded in great shape at the Brixton Academy. He arrived mob-handed with youthful guitarists (three plus bassist and son-in-law, Charlie Jones), and sallied forth with a resolute blast of "Tall Cool One".

The first of many surprises followed immediately: a faithful version of "Ramble On" from Led Zeppelin II. In the past it has been Plant's policy to keep the Zeppelin legacy firmly at arm's length, anxious to avoid any hint of trading on past glories. But on this occasion rather like Neil Young earlier in the month at Finsbury Park he threw caution to the winds, threading a succession of vintage favourites throughout the main body of the set.

"Going To California", from the untitled fourth Led Zeppelin album, came up as part of an acoustic sequence which also featured a version of Buffalo Springfield's "Bluebird" and Tim Hardin's "If I Were A Carpenter". Then there was "Thank You" and "What Is And What Should Never Be" (both Led Zeppelin II) each delivered with exceptional warmth and supple finesse.

The encores produced "You Shook Me", rendered as an impromptu duet with Black Crowes' vocalist Chris Robinson, who might have fared better if he'd found out what the words were beforehand, and a jaw-dropping finale of "Whole Lotta Love", complete with full, free-form "orgasmic" middle section.

But it was emphatically not a golden oldies show. Far from being sidelined or overshadowed, Plant's newer material was highlighted by its close proximity to so many classics. Indeed, in a masterstroke of tactical manoeuvring, he chose relatively subtle Zeppelin numbers, while marshalling the most muscular songs from his own repertoire to provide the climactic peaks of the set.

One such sequence began with the winsome "29 Palms", intensified with the meaty jabs and hooks of "Promised Land" (Plant sparring on harmonica with guitarist Francis Dunnery) and peaked in a shuddering display of force majeure with "Calling To You".

Plant's may be a voice of the past, but he still has plenty to say. In seamlessly combining old and new with such inspired expertise, he produced a show to rank with the best in the capital this year.

Edited June 9, 2013 by kenog

[kenog]

The Arts: Shining bright ROCK Robert Plant at Brixton Academy

DELINGPOLE, JAMES. The Daily Telegraph [London (UK)] 20 July 1993

[Robert Plant] broke all the rules when he played the Brixton Academy. In a performance which gave as much space to his old Led Zeppelin numbers as it did to material from his latest solo album Fate of Nations, Plant proved that, at 45, he is still setting standards by which all others should be judged.

Young, talented and enthusiastic, they are all clearly thrilled to jam alongside the genial leather-larynxed rock god. It showed in their renditions of Thank You, Ramble On and a stupendous Whole Lotta Love (all from 1969's Led Zeppelin II), handled with unashamed reverence for the originals.

Edited June 9, 2013 by kenog

[kenog]

The Times [London (UK)] 21 Aug 1993.

LED ZEPPELIN IV (1971) LIKE NUREYEV in Doc Martens, guitarist Jimmy Page plods his way through the leaden riffs of Black Dog and When The Levee Breaks, while Robert Plant screams encouragement. Some of Led Zeppelin's music is quite horrible. Most of it, in fact.

But wait. "If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now; it's just a spring clean for the May queen." Here's Page at his nimble best, picking a catchy folk-style melody from an acoustic guitar then peeling off a glorious electric solo for pomp rock's most enduring anthem, Stairway to Heaven. Plant's words are complete tosh, of course, but there is real drama as the tension builds, climaxes and dissipates through eight minutes. It's deeply unfashionable to say so, but this is exhilarating stuff.

For such a remarkable combination of talents, Led Zeppelin always struggled to break away from the hype and hysteria and reach their full potential. From here it was downhill all the way. Fast

[kenog]

Plant explores his roots

The Vancouver Sun [Vancouver, B.C] 21 Sep 1993

MEMPHIS, Tenn. -- When he's on tour, singer Robert Plant likes to visit the local stomping grounds of his musical heroes.

``I do it everywhere in the world,'' the former lead singer for Led Zeppelin said in the Commercial Appeal newspaper Sunday.

Plant, who is performing Wednesday in Memphis, said he's thinking of making his second visit to nearby Robinsonville, Miss., the former home of blues legend Robert Johnson and other musicians.

``There's a lot of spent emotion down there, a lot of stories, a lot of oppression, a lot of sadness, a lot of muted expression,'' Plant said.

His current album is Fate of Nations.

[kenog]

Rocker Plant doesn't want the millions

Wilker, Deborah. The Ottawa Citizen [Ottawa, Ont] 02 Oct 1993

He doesn't want the millions. He doesn't want the attention. Mostly, he doesn't want to go back.

At least not this year.

"I can't imagine anything more horrifying than three middle-aged men trying to pretend that Black Dog is significant. It's inappropriate.

Not that classic rock crooner Robert Plant, 45, is still on the anti-Zep kick he milked through the '80s. He's over that now. In fact he'd go on forever about the vaunted days of Led Zeppelin if there was time.

But idle chat is one thing. Going out and doing it -- actually being Led Zeppelin again -- is something Plant won't consider. Not even now that his solo career has cooled just a little; or that his new album Fate of Nations is a Billboard also-ran; or that promoters have guaranteed him more than $50 million for a Zep tour with surviving band mates Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones.

"I respect and love Led Zeppelin enough to do it the extreme favor of not destroying the beauty of the myth, Plant said. "And I have no intention of putting myself in a position that is retro.

Still, his mere return to the charts and concert stage every few years automatically provokes such nostalgia.

So why not just take the money, swallow a little pride, and run all the way to the bank?

"You may take your ex-wife out to dinner, but you don't have sex with her, at least I don't, the British rocker said a few years back.

Reminded of that telling quote, he said it still holds up. "I just don't want that kind of satisfaction, Plant said. "I wanna move and feel and maintain `this' orbit. I'm a mover, ya know.

Aside from that, Plant is already exceedingly rich -- even in mega-star rock circles -- and he just doesn't want the hassle of it all.

He lived that superstar frenzy for 12 years beginning in 1968, gamely alternating with Mick Jagger as the industry's poster boy for wretched excess and hard living.

Now a rock elder, he's content simply to create and perform in a manner that he feels befits his age and standing.

After a short summer run in Europe with Bob Dylan and Neil Young, Plant is launching his first U.S. tour in three years. He's kicking it off this week in Fort Lauderdale, then moving on to the 35 cities that will comprise a first leg.

For years after the break-up of Zeppelin (which was prompted by the death of drummer John Bonham, among other tensions), Plant could hardly bring himself to utter a syllable about the band or what its groundbreaking blues-metal riffs meant to popular music.

He lived a strange kind of denial, forging ahead with detached solo albums.

"I'm not a captive of my success. I hold the keys and I hold the chains, he said

Edited June 9, 2013 by kenog

[kenog]

Peter Howell Toronto Star. Toronto Star [Toronto, Ont] 07 Oct 1993

Led Zeppelin Soars: It's common to find unreleased tracks used as come-ons to sell boxed-set retrospectives of major artists, but rarely do such tracks amount to anything more than interesting filler. If the song was really good, the band would have wanted it out sooner, right?

A happy exception is "Baby Come On Home", an outtake from the 1968 sessions for Led Zeppelin's eponymous debut album. This soulful blues number, recorded 25 years ago this weekend, is included on two major new Zeppelin CD reissues, which I'll review in my column in Saturday's Weekend section.

The song features a great Robert Plant vocal, but when I spoke to the man himself recently, he seemed unimpressed by a song that he said had literally been tossed into the trash.

"It's interesting . . . but it's no 'Dazed And Confused'," Plant said.

"To be perfectly frank, you might think I'm very naive, but the track itself was found in a skid outside a recording studio, when the recording studio was sold.

"Somebody threw out all the tapes, and there were (also) Who tapes, and that's where it came from. So that's quite interesting."

Edited June 9, 2013 by kenog

[kenog]

A FEW GOOD LAUGHS WITH ONE OF ROCK'S living LEGENDS

Potter, Greg. The Vancouver Sun [Vancouver, B.C] 07 Oct 1993

PROFILE AND INTERVIEW WITH ROBERT PLANT

One morning three years ago, I stumbled into the office and headed, per usual, to gather the day's correspondence. There, among the hate mail, death threats and recyclable promotional crud, was a postcard from Key West, Fla. that read simply: ``Great humor! Journalism lives! I wish I'd seen `The Who' review. Best Wishes, Robert Plant.''

The postcard, with a recipe for Key Lime Pie on the front, arrived a week or so after I'd hacked out a particularly smart-alecky -- though nonetheless positive -- review of the singer's last Vancouver visit in October 1990.

I mention this not because I'm pen pals with the rock aristocracy, but because it proves something I'd long suspected: that Plant, former frontman for Led Zeppelin, the biggest, heaviest, most complex and hedonistic band of the 1970s, has one helluva good sense of humor.

``Well, of course, I remember that implicitly,'' he laughs when reminded of said postcard, now framed and hanging on yours truly's living-room wall. ``And naturally I've got your review hanging on my living-room wall.''

Calling from his record company office in New York, Plant is witty, thoughtful and instantly likable. Is this really the Wild Man of blues from the Black Country? Is this really the Golden God who rode around in a jet christened Caesar's Chariot? Is this really the man who helped introduce an entire generation of American groupies to new uses for sushi?

``People have written books about Led Zep but they've missed a lot of what was really good and really funny,'' says Plant, whose sold-out, small-hall tour brings him to the Orpheum tonight to plug his latest, Fate of Nations. ``You don't sell stuff on the newsstand or the TV that is nice.

``I think a lot of it is pretty cheap,'' he continues, ``a cheap buck. I don't really give a hoot, to be frank; it's all a way of somebody else making a dollar. But I mean, much of that time in Zeppelin was very, very funny -- VERY, VERY funny -- and, to be honest, I can't remember most of it now.''

Robert Anthony Plant was born 45 years ago in Bromwich, Staffordshire, not far from Birmingham in England's industrial Midlands, a region that can turn from soot-encrusted grey to lush-and-rolling green in the blink of an eye.

Nearly shanghaied into a life of accountancy, he gave himself until age 20 to make it as a singer -- and he did. In 1968, Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, bassist John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham bashed out Train Kept A Rollin' in a clapboard rehearsal room in London and that was that. Led Zeppelin, unlike the joke that spawned its name, did not plummet into the dirt as many had expected.

A dozen years and several-million-album sales later, the results are still in heavy rotation on classic and album-rock radio: Communication Breakdown, Whole Lotta Love, Immigrant Song, Black Dog, Over the Hills and Far Away, Kashmir, All My Love and, of course, Stairway to Heaven.

``The music was always strong,'' says Plant, explaining his former group's ongoing popularity. ``Trends and contemporary hipness come and go. I mean, the people riding on the crest of the wave now, if they don't keep it up, there's going to be one or two survivors, like Sting from the punk thing.

``It's like, Elvis Costello took his course and went wherever he went. I don't know if Paul Weller is doing stuff for us now that we can believe in. The Clash are reforming, I think, but that's a bit like Iron Butterfly reforming, y'know? It's not realistic. So, I don't know, I guess it was just the strength of the vibe.''

The vibe was shattered in 1980 with the death of Plant's longtime pal, Bonham. ``The band didn't exist the minute Bonzo had gone,'' he has said. For Plant, it was the latest in a series of personal tragedies that included a near-fatal car crash in 1976 and the death of his son in 1977.

Retreating to his blues roots with the Honeydrippers the following year, Plant played small British clubs and, in 1982, unleashed his solo debut, Pictures at Eleven. That album and its follow-ups, 1983's The Principle of Moments and 1985's Shaken `n Stirred, were, he has said, conscious attempts to slip the Zeppelin bridle. By the time Now and Zen hit the stands in 1988, he had changed his tune.

``I've stopped apologizing to myself for having this great period of success and fanatical acceptance,'' he told Rolling Stone at the time. ``It's time to get on and enjoy it now. I want to have a great time instead of making all these excuses.''

Though hardly throwbacks, that album and 1990's Manic Nirvana smacked of things 10 years gone, to borrow a phrase. Thanks to state-of-the-art technology and computer sampling, the works sounded fresh and vibrant. Nonetheless, there was no mistaking the knudge-and-wink behind the sampled inserts of Black Dog and Whole Lotta Love in the 1988 hit Tall Cool One.

``Everything I do, I do for now,'' Plant says. ``I want to make stuff that's simplistic, that isn't too contrived. And I guess Zeppelin, although it was a bit of a monster, the actual music itself was also honest and naive. I like that.''

Those very qualities inspired Plant to dive into his extensive record collection when he returned home to the Midlands from his 1990-'91 tour. Between dropping in at the local pub and taking in Wolverhampton Wanderers' soccer matches (``They're playing like a bunch of dumb clucks -- they lost for the fourth time in a row last night''), Plant rediscovered the music of Traffic, Tim Hardin, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Moby Grape, the Incredible String Band, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and others.

``I quite liked that folk-rock period around `67-'68,'' he says. ``It was really naive and pretty. I wanted to do stuff that said, `Hey, I'm a sweet guy, too.' It's not all sex in the bathroom of an airplane. Some of it is, but a lot of it isn't.'''

Arguably his strongest solo release to date, Fate of Nations captures all Plant intended and more. The singalong single, 29 Palms, swept easily into the Top 10 and the followup, I Believe, is poised to do the same. A cover of Hardin's If I Were A Carpenter recalls his pre-Zep days with Bonham in the Band of Joy and The Greatest Gift is a potent celebration of life and living. In short, the album exudes that timeless quality inherent in the works of his influences and, indeed, his old group.

``I think (the music of Led Zeppelin) was unusual in that it didn't really follow any particular theme and that was reoccuring,'' he says. ``Therefore, for the listener in those days, it was considered interesting because it was changing all the time.

``Today, it's not quite the same ballgame. If you don't give people the same thing all the time, they can sometimes get a bit like, `Well, what's he doing now? Why do we have to listen to this when we want the strength and the power?' But, you see, I'm a writer and I write primarily for myself.''

A similar logic goes into explaining why Plant -- who drew 14,000 fans to the Pacific Coliseum on his last jaunt -- opted for venues a quarter of the size this time around. ``I figured that if I pleased myself musically, than I should really try and present myself in the way I think I should be seen, as well as the way I think I should be heard, for the rest of my career.

``Everybody who goes (to a concert) wants to see it,'' he continues. ``So I'd like to make it quite intimate, just like I've tried to make my music intimate and not the big corporate bombardment. There's no point making a sensitive kind of record and then going out and playing huge auditoriums and trying to put the same thing across. It's an experiment. It'll either work or it won't.''

He doesn't seem terribly concerned one way or the other -- he has no doubt that his self-described ``lust for creating'' will continue to flourish. ``I've experienced so much that I want to share with people and I want to watch it go by in a kind of cinemascopic environment. There's so many things I've seen and done.''

And if it all should ever come to pass?

``Well, it won't,'' he says bluntly. ``But if it does -- I don't know. I think I'd run away with the most beautiful girl in the world. And then the next day, I'd run away with the most beautiful girl in the world. And so on, and so on, and so on . . .''

Edited June 9, 2013 by kenog

[kenog]

Sinclair, David. The Times [London (UK)] 08 Oct 1993

LED ZEPPELIN Boxed Set2 (Atlantic 7567-82477) "NOT since Elvis joined the Army has an audience so completely refused to acknowledge an artist's inactivity," Cameron Crowe wrote in the liner notes for the first Led Zeppelin boxed set, released in 1990, ten years after the group's demise.

As if to confirm Crowe's observation, that four-disc compilation has since sold more than a million copies, making it the best-selling boxed set retrospective ever, according to Atlantic. Boxed Set2 is a more modest double-disc package that scoops up the remaining 31 tracks from Led Zeppelin's nine studio albums that were not deemed worthy of inclusion in the first anthology. For virtually any other act, such a concentration of second division material would have produced an embarrassment of a high order.

But despite excesses in other departments, there was precious little fat on Zeppelin's musical bone and even at their most whimsical (the knockabout funk of "The Crunge") or self-indulgent (the four minutes of unaccompanied percussion that comprises "Bonzo's Montreux"), their music always retains its core dignity.

[kenog]

Robert Plant goes back to his roots; Digs into '67-'68 folk- rock record collection for inspiration on Fate of Nations

Potter, Greg. The Gazette [Montreal, Que] 20 Nov 1993

VANCOUVER - One morning three years ago, I stumbled into the office and headed, as usual, to gather the day's correspondence.

There, among the death threats and nonrecyclable promotional crud, was a postcard from Key West, Fla. It read: "Great humor! Journalism lives! I wish I'd seen The Who review. Best Wishes, Robert Plant."

The postcard, with a recipe for key-lime pie on the front, arrived a week or so after I'd hacked out a particularly smart-alecky - though fairly positive - review of the singer's last Vancouver visit, in October 1990.

I mention this not because I'm pen pals with the rock aristocracy, but because it proves something I'd long suspected: that Plant, former frontman for Led Zeppelin, the biggest, heaviest, most complex and hedonistic band of the 1970s, has a pretty good sense of humor.

"Well, of course, I remember that implicitly," he laughs when reminded of said postcard, now framed and hanging on yours truly's living-room wall. "And naturally I've got your review hanging on my living-room wall."

Calling from his record-company office in New York, Plant is witty, thoughtful and instantly likable. Is this really the Wild Man of blues from the Black Country? Is this really the Golden God who rode around in a jet christened Caesar's Chariot? Is this really the man who helped introduce an entire generation of American groupies to new uses for sushi?

"People have written books about Led Zep but they've missed a lot of what was really good and really funny," says Plant, whose tour brings him to the Forum Theatre in Montreal on Tuesday night to plug his latest, Fate of Nations. "You don't sell stuff on the newsstand or the TV that is nice.

"I think a lot of it is pretty cheap," he continues, "a cheap buck. I don't really give a hoot; it's all a way of somebody else making a dollar. But I mean, much of that time in Zeppelin was very, very funny - and, to be honest, I can't remember most of it now."

Born 45 years ago

Robert Anthony Plant was born 45 years ago in Bromwich, Staffordshire, not far from Birmingham in England's industrial Midlands, a region that can turn from soot-encrusted gray to lush- and-rolling green in the blink of an eye.

Nearly shanghaied into a life of accountancy, he gave himself until age 20 to make it as a singer - and he did. In 1968, Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, bassist John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham bashed out Train Kept A Rollin' in a clapboard rehearsal room in London.

A dozen years and several-million-album sales later, the results are still in heavy rotation on classic and album-rock radio: Communication Breakdown, Whole Lotta Love, Immigrant Song, Black Dog, Over the Hills and Far Away, Kashmir, All My Love and, of course, Stairway to Heaven.

"The music was always strong," says Plant, explaining his former group's ongoing popularity.

"Trends and contemporary hipness come and go. I mean, the people riding on the crest of the wave now, if they don't keep it up, there's going to be one or two survivors, like Sting from the punk thing.

"It's like, Elvis Costello took his course and went wherever he went. I don't know if Paul Weller is doing stuff for us now that we can believe in. The Clash are reforming, I think, but that's a bit like Iron Butterfly reforming, y'know? It's not realistic. So, I don't know, I guess it was just the strength of the vibe."

The vibe was shattered in 1980 with the death of Plant's longtime pal Bonham. "The band didn't exist the minute Bonzo had gone," he has said. For Plant, it was the latest in a series of personal tragedies that included a near-fatal car crash in 1976 and the death of his son in 1977.

Retreating to his blues roots with the Honeydippers the following year, Plant played small British clubs and, in 1982, unleashed his solo debut, Pictures at Eleven.

Changed his tune

That album and its follow-ups, 1983's The Principle of Moments and 1985's Shaken 'n Stirred, were, he has said, conscious attempts to slip the Zeppelin bridle. By the time Now and Zen arrived in 1988, he had changed his tune.

"I've stopped apologizing to myself for having this great period of success and fanatical acceptance," he told Rolling Stone at the time. "It's time to get on and enjoy it now. I want to have a great time instead of making excuses."

Though hardly throwbacks, that album and 1990's Manic Nirvana smacked of things 10 years gone, to borrow a phrase. Thanks to state-of-the-art technology and computer sampling, the works sounded fresh and vibrant. But there was no mistaking the nudge-and- wink behind the sampled inserts of Black Dog and Whole Lotta Love in the 1988 hit Tall Cool One.

"Everything I do, I do for now," Plant says. "I want to make stuff that's simplistic, that isn't too contrived. And I guess Zeppelin, although it was a bit of a monster, the actual music itself was also honest and naive. I like that."

Those very qualities inspired Plant to dive into his extensive record collection when he returned home to the Midlands from his 1990-'91 tour. Between dropping in at the local pub and taking in Wolverhampton Wanderers' soccer matches ("They're playing like a bunch of dumb clucks - they lost for the fourth time in a row last night"), Plant rediscovered the music of Traffic, Tim Hardin, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Moby Grape, the Incredible String Band, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young and others.

`I'm a sweet guy, too'

"I quite liked that folk-rock period around `67-'68," he says. "It was really naive and pretty. I wanted to do stuff that said, `Hey, I'm a sweet guy, too. It's not all sex in the bathroom of an airplane'."

Arguably, his strongest solo release to date, Fate of Nations captures all Plant intended and more. The sing-along single, 29 Palms, swept easily into the Top 10 and the follow-up, I Believe, also did well. A cover of Hardin's If I Were A Carpenter recalls his pre-Zep days with Bonham in the Band of Joy, and The Greatest Gift is a potent celebration of life and living. In short, the album exudes that timeless quality inherent in the works of his influences and, indeed, his old group.

"I think (the music of Led Zeppelin) was unusual in that it didn't really follow any particular theme," he says. "Therefore, for the listener in those days, it was considered interesting because it was changing all the time.

"Today, it's not quite the same ball game. If you don't give people the same thing all the time, they can sometimes get a bit like, `Well, what's he doing now? Why do we have to listen to this when we want the strength and the power?' But, you see, I'm a writer and I write primarily for myself."

`Make it intimate'

A similar logic goes into explaining why Plant opted for mid-sized venues for his current tour: "I figured that if I pleased myself musically, than I should really try and present myself in the way I think I should be seen, as well as the way I think I should be heard, for the rest of my career.

"Everybody who goes (to a concert) wants to see it," he continues. "So I'd like to make it quite intimate, just like I've tried to make my music intimate and not the big corporate bombardment. There's no point making a sensitive kind of record and then going out and playing huge auditoriums and trying to put the same thing across. It's an experiment. It'll either work or it won't."

He doesn't seem terribly concerned one way or the other - he has no doubt that his self-described "lust for creating" will continue to flourish. "I've experienced so much that I want to share with people." And if it all should ever come to pass? "Well, it won't," he says bluntly. "But if it does - I don't know. I think I'd run away with the most beautiful girl in the world. And then the next day, I'd run away with the most beautiful girl in the world. And so on, and so on, . . ."

Edited June 9, 2013 by kenog

[kenog]

Robert Plant leaves mega-band days behind Ex-Zep loves small settings like Varsity Arena

Peter Howell TORONTO STAR. Toronto Star [Toronto, Ont] 21 Nov 1993

Robert Plant is calling from America, but he's thinking of Canada.

"I've just played the jukebox while having some perch and cappuccino, and I put 'American Woman' on by the Guess Who," he says from a road stop outside Cleveland.

"And I didn't realize before how much Burton Cummings was in fact me. But he's cool; I've got all his solo albums, and everything."

He has warmer Canadian thoughts about Toronto singer Alannah Myles.

"Please give her my love," he says, sending his valentine via this article. "Please say that I'm sending my love to the most beautiful singer in T'ranna!"

The banter is very typical of the 45-year-old former Led Zeppelin singer, who brings his latest solo incarnation and "best ever" band to Varsity Arena on Wednesday.

Typical in the jaunty way he likes to maintain awareness of how his blues-fired vocal shriek has been an influence on others - certainly on Myles, although Cummings is the same age as Plant and has been recording at least as long as him, if not longer.

Typical, too, in Plant's attention to detail - few international rockers of his stature would know, or care, that the Guess Who were Canadian - and his wide interest in all kinds of music.

The serendipitous way he punched up "American Woman" on the jukebox speaks of the way he's always conducted his musical affairs, both within Zeppelin and without.

Drawing from such disparate influences as the blues of Willie Dixon and Howlin' Wolf, the folk of Tim Hardin and Joan Baez, the psychedelic rock of Moby Grape and Traffic and instrumental flourishes that stretch from classical to middle eastern, Plant's music is a reflection of himself: a restless spirit eager for new adventures and reluctant to stay long in one place.

That explains why Plant will be performing at the 5,000-seat Varsity Arena, when he could be pulling 50,000-plus people to SkyDome if only he would oblige the bended-knee entreaties of Led Zep fans - as well as his former guitar partner, Jimmy Page.

Nobody has to tell Plant (although everybody does, anyway) how the Zeppelin airship keeps soaring ever higher, 13 years after the group disbanded, with the recent simultaneous CD release of the entire Zep studio album output and Part II of a record-selling boxed set compilation.

"What I'm doing now, it's much more personable and it hits home harder this way," Plant says of his current smaller-is-better tour.

"There's an intimacy there, with the call-and-response from the audience . . . I can say and do and instigate and play and cajole and tease and do whatever I like. You get an instant turnaround from people who know they're looking at the sweat on your brow, and it's hitting them in the face.

"It's very much more of a shared experience. I wouldn't be doing it, otherwise."

Besides singing songs from his new Fate Of Nations album, Plant is bowing to nostalgia by spicing his set with the most-ever Zeppelin tunes he's ever played since the band split in 1980, following the death of drummer John Bonham. But he only goes so far, offering up "Whole Lotta Love" while avoiding "Stairway To Heaven" and digging deeper through the Zep canon in tunes like "Thank You" and "Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You".

Plant is defiantly unsentimental about Led Zeppelin, caring not for the good ol' days when he and bandmates Page, Bonham and John Paul Jones were famous for hard touring excesses, heaving TV sets off hotel balconies into swimming pools and the like.

He seems to prefer European audiences to American ones, because Europeans expect and enjoy rock shows with a variety of styles of music, as opposed to North American events, which tend to bunch like- sounding bands together.

"In Norway, we played with (dance/techno group) Jesus Jones and Joan Baez, and - oh, man! - that's not unusual at all," he says.

"In America and Canada, years ago, all concerts and festivals used to be so vividly different. In Zeppelin we played with John Lee Hooker, Woody Herman, Roland Kirk, Iron Butterfly, the Doors . . .

"I mean, there's so many people who make up a show, and it shouldn't just be heavy metal or hard rock or AOR or pop or underground or grunge, in different categories. Music is entertainment, and everybody should be playing on the same shows to give everybody a proper idea of what a day's entertainment should be."

To put his money where his mouth is, he agreed to open for retro- rocker Lenny Kravitz on a European tour, both to warm up for his current headlining gig and to change the thinking of a few heads.

Says Plant: "I was using the position with Lenny to get through to an audience that normally would have said, 'Oh, yeah, Led Zeppelin? Yeah, don't know much about them.'

He waggles a disapproving finger at rock critics and their ilk, for perpetuating the "heavy metal gods" stereotype of Led Zep.

"It's unfortunate, really," he says. "The paradox is that a lot of your contemporaries in the press have decided that 'Whole Lotta Love' is the epitomy of Led Zeppelin, while ignoring the fact that 'Stairway To Heaven' is as far from heavy metal as you could possibly go.

"It's so cliched and hackneyed to even discuss the classification of music because music is music. All I know is, my career right now, I'm getting more out of it than ever before, because my band is better - much better than the ones I've had before."

So much better (is he really including Led Zep in that?) Plant ventures that the audience at Varsity may hear something they've never heard before from him.

"I'd say at times during two or three songs in Toronto, you'll feel something that's new, and is not just of the Led Zeppelin songs and not from a track from my solo albums, but is the extension of musicians going somewhere new," Plant says enthusiasticially.

"It's just in the air. And that's what I live for musically, career-wise."

Edited June 9, 2013 by kenog

[kenog]

The other side of Led Zeppelin Robert Plant and the world's loudest folk band

Peter Howell Toronto Star. Toronto Star [Toronto, Ont] 25 Nov 1993

The street hustler hawking the heavy metal ashtrays last night outside the Robert Plant show at Varsity Arena had it all wrong.

Sure, Plant used to sing for Led Zeppelin, the granddaddy of hard rock and metal bands. And it took him no time at all to get the airship flying again, leading with Zep's "Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You".

But while the skull ashtrays and skeleton knick-knack holders on sale outside did look both attractive and useful, this was no metalhead event. The dudes and dudettes inside were being treated to the other side of Led Zeppelin, the one in which it was the world's loudest folk band.

Plant was willing to feed the fires of nostalgia, but he wanted to use softer wood. The musical emphasis was on folk, blues and psychedelic rock from his Zep and solo canon, and he added new twists at every turn.

The "Babe" opener was preceded by middle eastern music, and it rambled on with some excellent Spanish-style acoustic coloring from guitarist Francis Dunnery, part of Plant's superb five-piece backing band.

Solo tunes "Hurting Kind (I've Got My Eyes On You)", "29 Palms" and "I Believe" followed in quick succession, with the agile Plant maintaining a constant whirling, mike-twirling presence on stage.

"Have you been good?" he asked the audience, which included his Toronto rock buddy Alannah Myles. "I hope not!"

It was Zep time again as cheers greeted the opening of "Thank You", which the boisterous 45-year-old Plant punctuated by tossing his tambourine high into the air.

Then came the first of several nutty professor dissertations on how the sweet hippie '60s had yielded to the evils of "commercial rawk radio."

None of it made much sense ("I can't wait to read the reviews tomorrow," he joked) yet it was humorous and light, a perfect set- up for acoustic tunes like Tim Hardin's "If I Were A Carpenter" and Zep's "Going To California".

What followed was the show highlight, a 10-minute-plus weird journey through songs past via "In The Mood". It began with fine piano playing by Phil Johnstone, following by Plant detours through Zeppelin's "In The Light", Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth" and Donovan's "Season Of The Witch". It looked like Plant was about to hit on Madonna's "Justify My Love", but he thought better of it, and let Johnstone's piano run it out.

A real mindtripping moment, and so was the sudden appearance on stage a few minutes later of a large lemon, bringing to mind Zeppelin's randy "The Lemon Song" and much shared snickering between Plant, band and fans.

But it would have been too obvious to play "The Lemon Song", so instead he performed a Zep tune you don't hear on radio that much, the great, bluesy "What Is And What Should Never Be", leaving the encore for the Zep classics "Black Country Woman" and "Whole Lotta Love".

A whole lotta Zeppelin, but a whole lot of fun and invention, too. It was a you-shoulda-been-there show, one of the year's best, in fact.

Edited June 9, 2013 by kenog

[kenog]

PLANT'S AUDIENCE BASKS IN NOSTALGIA

Niester, Alan. The Globe and Mail [Toronto, Ont] 26 Nov 1993

'I CAN see by your eyes," observed veteran rock vocalist Robert Plant, squinting into the 4,000 faces that surrounded him at Toronto's Varsity Stadium Wednesday night, "that you all remember the Sixties very well." By this, Plant must have been making a none-too-subtle observation on the sea of wrinkles, laugh lines and puffiness that surrounded him, or the fact that bifocals had replaced nose rings as the fashion accessory of choice. Because this was, to be generous, an audience long on life experiences, but short on mosh pit etiquette, one that had come out predominantly to bask in as much Led Zeppelin nostalgia as it could get.

And in this regard, Plant and company certainly did not disappoint. Things started with an updated take on the Zep chestnut Babe I'm Gonna Leave You, an electrifying opening that juxtaposed Plant's still-potent banshee wail with guitarist Francis Dunnery's fingertip-ripping, bicep- building acoustic fret-work.

Other favourites were joyously and generously tossed into the frothing mix - a great take on Thank You from Led Zeppelin II, which Plant updated with some jazz-inflected Van Morrison-styled scat passages, an anguished What Is And What Never Should Be and a kick-ass Ramble On, both from the same 1970 album.

And there was more. An ultra-unplugged Going To California, on which Plant's vocals were challenged by a trio of acoustic strummers (Dunnery plus rhythm guitarist Innis Sibun and mandolin player Phil Johnstone) and a rhythm-heavy take on Whole Lotta Love which topped the evening off with a perfect vibe.

But for all that, it must be remembered that this was still supposed to be a Robert Plant solo experience; indeed, some of the finest moments of the evening occurred on numbers from Plant's recent and not-so-recent solo catalogue. From his current Fate Of Nations album came the melodic 29 Palms and the power ballad I Believe. But the most surprising and adventurous moments came on Plant's own In The Mood. This is the number that centres on the line "I'm in the mood for a melody," and in a 10- minute-plus opus, Plant packed in not only short takes on Sixties melodies such as For What It's Worth and Season Of The Witch, but also let his five-piece backing band loose on a buzz-saw workout that revived the lost art of the psychedelic-inspired jam. As Plant himself so succinctly intoned (and let this stand as the quintessential summation of the evening's diverse pleasures): "Ooohhh yeh, Ooohh yeh."

Edited June 9, 2013 by kenog

[SteveAJones]

This thread seems as good as any to post this 1989 ISMO Fanzine (UK) interview with John Paul Jones:

Scans courtesy Steve A. Jones Archive

[kenog]

SAJ,

This is excellent stuff. The only thing that concerns me is when JPJ was asked about Coda, and said that there were very, very few outtakes left. That doesn't augur well for any unreleased material for the new boxed sets?

This thread seems as good as any to post this 1989 ISMO Fanzine (UK) interview with John Paul Jones:

Scans courtesy Steve A. Jones Archive

[pottedplant]

Thanks kenog and SAJ. Always my favorite postings, along with DebJ's, on the forum. So interesting and enlightening.

[kenog]

PottedPlant, I am sure all three of us are pleased to know you enjoy the material posted.

Thanks kenog and SAJ. Always my favorite postings, along with DebJ's, on the forum. So interesting and enlightening.

[kenog]

Thompson, Ben. The Independent [London (UK)] 28 Nov 1993

Led Zeppelin: The Complete Studio Recordings (Atlantic, 10 CDs, out tomorrow)

If you were one of the million or so people who bought the original four-disc remastered boxed set in 1990, you might be a bit unhappy about this. The temptation to sell children and pets into slavery to get your hands on it will still be considerable. Not just a mighty musical monolith but also a landmark in crazed CD opulence, this chunky box contains all nine of Led Zeppelin's studio releases, packed back to back in five spined picture books, which are stacked in a grooved rack like used lunch trays in a canteen. No strangers to conspicuous consumption in life, the band's legend is well served by such an absurdly lavish monument.

Whether you see Led Zeppelin as rank defilers of the blues or noble guardians of the holy flame of heaviosity, there is no denying how great they sound here. Journey with them - from the electrifying edginess of a poorly received but enduring debut, to the bulging codpiece of Led Zeppelin II and the blissful folkways of III. The shockingly funky Houses of the Holy and the epic Physical Graffiti are in good shape too, and if Presence marks the start of a downslope, well that just shows that the road of excess does not lead to the palace of wisdom.

By In Through the Out Door, Robert Plant is showing a previously unremarked vocal resemblance to Loz from Kingmaker. Earlier on, his two voices - folk angel and rutting bison - have marked out a rocky high ground all of their own; Page's guitar playing has been simultaneously frazzled and elegant, and John Bonham's drumming has rearranged your neighbour's furniture. This is a collection that you not only could listen to all day, but might actually want to. Those with a sense of fiscal decency should either wait till next year when the discs will be released individually, or, preferably, buy a second-hand copy of Led Zeppelin III and listen to it over and over again.

[kenog]

Good things come in big CD packages

Saxberg, Lynn. The Ottawa Citizen [Ottawa, Ont] 11 Dec 1993

Led Zeppelin

The Complete Studio Recordings (Atlantic 82526-2)

In 1990, Atlantic released a two-CD set, and it was supposed to be a definitive Led Zeppelin anthology. This fall, a second box set, titled Boxed Set 2 , came out, made up of two CDs containing 31 tracks that weren't in the original set, plus a bonus track of Baby Come On Home , originally recorded in 1968.

But then the company issued this 10-CD mammoth set, which includes the nine studio albums and four bonus tracks.

So what does a Zephead buy? Well, the sound on the big set has been digitally remastered by guitarist Jimmy Page, so those old albums have never sounded better. But if you already have all the albums and you're looking for rarities, three of the four bonus tracks are available elsewhere. The sound may be worth it, but it's a pricey proposition for just one song.

Edited June 10, 2013 by kenog

[kenog]

Our music scribe plays tattle-tale Santa

Peter Howell Toronto Star. Toronto Star [Toronto, Ont] 23 Dec 1993

THE DONG REMAINS THE SAME . . .

ROBERT PLANT, the ol' lemon squeezer himself, had chilly memories of his experiences with the Plaster Casters, the groupies famous for making souvenir plaster casts of rock-star manhood in full strut.

When I interviewed him in May, lead hand Cynthia Plaster Caster had just won a longstanding court battle to recover her trophies from a scheming former friend. She's now planning to erect a touring exhibition of her art.

Plant was asked if his own family jewels, and those of fellow Led Zeppelin member Jimmy Page, were amongst the many the Plaster Casters immortalized.

"No, not me," he chuckled.

"No, no. I don't know about Jimmy. I got them (the Plaster Casters) in my room and then ran off. Because I can't stay still. Gotta go - whew!

"I think it was a bit cold at the time, weather wise, so I wasn't too keen on being immortalized at half my real size. Hah-hah!"

Plant seemed dazed and confused in his memories about the Jimi Hendrix incident. He once told Rolling Stone that a member of Led Zep had borrowed Hendrix's plaster member from a willing Plaster Caster, and then taken it for a test ride, so to speak.

"I remember all that going on," Plant said, changing the topic back to his own close brush with the Plaster Casters.

"I remember them being around with their little bag. I just had the terrible thought that it might not come off. And then what would I do?"

Edited June 10, 2013 by kenog

[kenog]

Smith, Giles.

The Independent [London (UK)] 06 Jan 1994

Jimmy Page turns 50 on Sunday. Giles Smith talked to him about acid, Led Zeppelin and the dreaded `Stairway'

Jimmy Page is delivered to the door of his record company in Baker Street, London, by his driver, Lionel. He is wearing jeans and a bomber jacket - Lionel, that is. Page is wearing a long black overcoat, a dark and seriously swish suit and a black shirt with a complicated collar and fashionable buttons. This is the guitarist who, during the 1970s, along with his fellow-members in the group Led Zeppelin, virtually patented hotel-trashing and on-tour mayhem. So you're not quite ready for the trace of David Niven in the voice, the fastidious politeness. "So sorry I'm late," he says, entering almost bang on time.

Page will be 50 on Sunday, though you would be hard pressed to read that in his unscored face and his lavish hair. Led Zeppelin gave out in 1980 when, after a night of drinking, their drummer, John Bonham, choked to death in his sleep at Page's house in Windsor. Since then, Page has knocked about in large homes in Berkshire and Hampshire; he's jammed with Aerosmith; he's fiddled with another band called the Firm; he's released a solo record (1986's Outrider) and collaborated with the even hairier David Coverdale. But you get the impression that he has never stopped thinking about Led Zeppelin - what they did, what they were. "Not that I would put it on regularly. But every now and again I would think it would be good to hear some of the old stuff. And it always held up."

They were the archetypal heavy rock band (drums, bass, guitar and a skinny guy with a high voice), who threw in a bit of folk for good measure. Would-be guitar heroes liked the way Page could manage the chunky riffs and the quick-fingered solo stuff. Also, he flaunted his tiny torso, draped himself in silk scarves and could beat the strings about with a violin bow. This seemed enviable at the time. All along, though, Page was running a secret life as the man who played boffin back in the studio, someone with a train-spotter's eye for detail.

"I used to check all the test-pressings of our records as they returned from around the world," he says with some enthusiasm. "We were a couple of albums down the line when I discovered the reason classical records sounded so much better than pop or rock was that they'd changed the acid that they dipped the lacquer into. Once I'd discovered that, then all the Led Zeppelin albums had to have the new acid treatment."

When compact discs were introduced, Led Zepellin's record label, Atlantic, exercised its contractual right to exploit the old material on the new format. Page claims that the label wasn't fussy about the transfer process. This caused him some agony. His voice rises and becomes thin with dismay: "On Houses of the Holy, side two of the tape that they employed, there was a sizzle. I was getting complaints from Zeppelin fans . . ."

Hence the project that has occupied him for the last couple of years. Going back to the original tapes where possible, Page has worked his way through the entire Led Zeppelin catalogue, re-mastering the music for CD in the hope of doing some justice to the impact of the vinyl originals. In 1992, he put out a selection in a four-CD box. "Real Zeppelin diehards were used to their vinyl and so they were familiar with the running orders. After `Song Remains the Same', they'd be hearing the first chord of `Rainsong' before it even appeared. Would they go along with my new running order?"

Yes they would. In September last year, a double CD came out bearing the things left off the four- pack. Last November, the nine studio albums appeared, sumptuously re-packaged, racked in a luxury container and all in all given the kind of treatment normally reserved for superior editions of Beatrix Potter. And finally this year, the albums will start emerging individually - your first chance to acquire a remastered CD-version of Led Zep IV in its original running order, without investing a sum in triple figures.

"Re-mastering is a lengthy process, so I had time to reflect. There were times when I missed John Bonham terribly. Time and again, you would be listening and thinking what an incredible talent he was. It's beyond rock'n'roll - it's into another area altogether. Powerful and purely from the wrist. There was no banging away. I've never heard so much volume out of drums. The classic drum sample, the one that's been stolen over and over, from `When the Levee Breaks', was actually recorded with just one stereo microphone up on a second landing pointing down. That's to do with the man and his understanding of the drums, knowing how to tune them properly, and the attack that he had. And the control, because it wasn't all loud."

We flick through the pictures in the boxed set's booklet, and Page pauses at one taken in the back of a limo, somewhere in America, somewhere in the 1970s. While the singer Robert Plant dozes in one of the car's comfortable corners, Bonham slumps in another, staring frozen-faced through the window. He looks like a man too tired to sleep. "He used to get so homesick," Page says quietly. "Terribly homesick, poor chap."

Page first saw Bonham play in 1968 when the guitarist was recruiting a band to follow the Yardbirds. And he first heard Robert Plant sing in "a teacher training college in Bromsgrove. I think he was tarmac-ing at the time. So I rescued him." Success came fast in America. "Every time we went back there, more people wanted to see us and the gigs got bigger and bigger. It was supply and demand. The one I felt really uncomfortable about was the Pontiac Superdome - 70,000 people indoors in an airlock. Bit by bit, the set increased to three-and-a- half hours. We were doing 45-minute versions of `Dazed and Confused'."

And this was the time when things went wild.

"Well, let's say we started to make life easier for ourselves. We had suites instead of sharing rooms the way we did on our first tour. And we had a private plane and things like that to make life easier. But all in all, that got to be the norm. A three-and-a- half hour set takes a lot out of you."

So it didn't feel unnecessary?

"Not at all. It was the only way to do it. If you're doing that size of show, you can't start flying chartered airlines, because you want to get off stage and be in your hotel room. So basically the quickest form of transport is a private plane."

Frankly, Zeppelin could have invested in an entire airforce on the profits of one song alone - the dreaded "Stairway to Heaven", eight minutes of tremulous doggerel which Page has never lost faith in. "I knew it was really good because we'd had a bit of difficulty getting it together. Not a lot, but a bit. Because it was a totally different structure to anything that had been around before. But we embarked on a tour of the States, before the fourth album was out on the shelves. And we played at the Forum in Los Angeles and we'd included `Stairway' in the set. At the end, about a third of the audience stood up and gave us a standing ovation, and I thought, `Actually, this may be a better number than I imagined.'

"Maybe Robert and I differ on this one: someone told me the other day that he said he'd forgotten what the whole thing was about, the gist of it. Which I thought was pretty strange for him to say at this point in time. Or at any point in time. From my point of view, it was a summing up of certain elements of the band - the acoustic side, the bringing the drums in much later, having this thing which crescendoed, which was actually speeding up at the same time. All deliberate. And Robert's lyrics were incredible, the ambiguity. We shouldn't go into that because people have their interpretations of what it's about. If Robert's forgotten, then let's leave it to everyone else's interpretations."

What about the Jimmy Page interpretation?

"No, no. I'll leave it at that, I think." And he smiles decorously.

At 50, Page now qualifies - whether he likes it or not - for the generalised respect that these days settles over rock's elders. Nobody is out to get him any more. He might not have relied on that in the late 1970s when punk rock parked its tank on his lawn. Punk sometimes seemed conceived specifically as a revolt against Led Zeppelin - their distance, their indulgence. As a member of the Clash said at the time: "I don't even have to listen to their music. Just looking at one of their album covers makes me want to vomit."

But somehow the nausea passed. Black Americans started sampling the noise of Bonham's drum kit for hip hop records. And maybe the rift was never as deep as it seemed. "The Sex Pistols were one of the ones that were knocking us," Page says, "and Johnny Rotten's next band, PiL, attempted `Kashmir', for heaven's sake. At the time, we went to see the Damned, who actually weren't quite so vocal about kicking the dinosaurs as some of the others. But I remember the drummer coming up and saying, `You know, I go home every night and play "Stairway" . . .' "

[kenog]

Zeppelin may fly again;Led Zeppelin;Rock

Sandall, Robert. The Times [London (UK)] 23 Jan 1994

Rumours of a return performance by Led Zeppelin abound. Robert Sandall outlines the difficulties this involves.

After all that Beatles reunion brouhaha, planet pop steadies itself for another nostalgia attack. Sadly, the headline can't read Led Zeppelin To Re-form because, as with The Beatles, only three of this legendary foursome are still alive, besides which the group's singer, Robert Plant, is extremely wary about resurrecting the name.

Signs are, though, that the surviving members of the band that led rock music into the heavy, hairy 1970s and then broke up in 1980, (after the sudden and impeccably rock and roll demise of their drummer, John Bonham, from vodka poisoning) are finally on the brink of a proper Zeppelin-esque outing, provisionally scheduled to take place in New York in the spring.

If it happens and there are some tricky details still to be ironed out this promises to be several cuts above the usual merchandising opportunity by which yesterday's heroes top up their pension funds.

MTV, the 24-hour cable rock channel, is currently negotiating to get Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, and bass player John Paul Jones, back together for a televised one-off performance that is intended to bring the curtain down on its highly successful Unplugged series.

The format for the show, which MTV stumbled upon more or less by accident four years ago, requires artists used to playing big stadia with truckloads of gear to perform in front of a small, invited studio audience with no, or only minimal, amplification.

Intimacy, a quality rock has conspicuously lacked in recent years, is Unplugged's great virtue. A scarcity of suitably famous, and musically proficient, talent has become its besetting problem. Most of the big names in rock have already been featured strumming, crooning and usually sitting, Unplugged-style. Some of them, notably Rod Stewart and Eric Clapton, have gone on to release an Unplugged concert album. In Clapton's case, this is now his most successful album ever released, with worldwide sales approaching 10m.

Though Led Zeppelin Unplugged could easily top that, commercial considerations are almost certainly not the main motive here. No new material, since Page scraped the Zeppelin barrel for Coda in 1983, has not stopped the group's back catalogue from selling by the million on digitally remastered CD. Twenty-three years after they recorded it, the PRS royalty flow from their best-loved song, the eight-minute epic, Stairway To Heaven, is still strong, Stairway having long since garnered more radio plays than any other piece of music ever recorded.

By 1973, and the release of their fifth LP, Led Zeppelin had sold more albums than any group in the world, including The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. By the time they retired, seven years and four more albums later, they were among the wealthiest members of the rock aristocracy.

And didn't we know it. Stately piles in the country were barely the half of it. While other acts hired private jets to transport themselves about on tour, Led Zeppelin actually owned one, Starship, which they had customised to include a lavishly appointed bedroom. Here they would entertain squads of euphoric female admirers. All this, shocking tales of backstage debauchery and half-hour drum solos too, meant that when the time came for a younger generation of rock musicians to question the self-indulgent practices of their elders, Led Zeppelin automatically went to the top of the hate list. "I don't even have to listen to their music," said Joe Strummer of The Clash. "Just looking at one of their album covers makes me want to vomit."

The backlash, however, never really materialised. Even back home in short-haired, narrow-trousered, dinosaur-baiting Britain, punk did nothing to dent Led Zeppelin's massive box-office appeal. In the summer of 1979, 120,000 fans turned out for what was to be their final British concert, at Knebworth Park.

Before Bonham drank himself to death on the eve of a European tour the following autumn, their last, and least interesting, studio album, In Through The Out Door, had topped the charts both here and in America.

Since the 1980 break-up, an informal weddings-and-parties only policy has seen the Zep trio reconvene for Live Aid, for the 40th anniversary of Atlantic records, and for the marriage of Bonham's son, Jason. In 1985, they tried rehearsing with a new drummer, Tony Thompson, but called things off on day two after Thompson spooked everybody, and hurt himself in a car crash. Page joined Plant on stage for a couple of numbers at an all-star charity event at Knebworth in 1990 and the 50-year-old guitarist has intimated from time to time that he wouldn't mind trying to get the old Zeppelin back aloft if his partners were willing. Plant though has never been keen. "It's impossible to consider Led Zeppelin in the present tense," has been his standard line on the regularly rumoured reunion.

Promoters meanwhile have unsuccessfully tried to bribe them back into the astrodomes. In 1991 Led Zeppelin turned down a reported $100m to tour America. The appeal of Unplugged, for them and for us, lies in the opportunity it now affords to redress a misconception that has grown up over the past decade that Led Zeppelin were, first and foremost, the gurus of hard rock; the band who taught Aerosmith to play loud and Guns N' Roses to behave badly. While it may be true that Jimmy Page pioneered the faithful recording of distorted electric guitars, and that various members of the group once did some quite disgraceful things with a red snapper, their best music was distinguished not by its unbridled rock and roll wildness but by its pop-melodic discipline and a carefully controlled ingenuity in the arrangements.

Often, Led Zeppelin sounded more like an amplified folk group than a rock band. Take, for example, their most popular opus, Stairway To Heaven. Here, better than anywhere, you can hear how the mighty Zeppelin were as enthralled by Celtic bell-tinkling types of The Incredible String Band ilk as they were by the jagged blues variations of Howlin' Wolf. The song begins with a pair of recorders gently tootling over an acoustic guitar; in comes Plant with his tuneful doodle about an Arthurian-sounding "lady" and her strange notions of upward mobility. After about four minutes, the electric guitars are revving up a bit, but no more than they do on some Fairport Convention records; the drums are still silent. By the time Bonham finally does come walloping in for a high-decibel instrumental coda, Page is just about to embark on the only long guitar solo in the history of rock that a postman could happily whistle. And while Plant's climactic shrieking may have provided the model for every heavy-metal screamer since, it is noticeable that he, unlike his ghastly imitators, doesn't work this potentially wearisome dramatic effect to death.

There are many other Zeppelin tracks, particularly from their brilliant third and fourth albums, which might have been devised with a future Unplugged performance in mind.

Fans with longer memories may even recall the band's acoustic interludes in concert, everybody seated in a matey semi-circle, with Plant faking the hippie sorcerer on his high stool, Page thrumming away on a tiny mandolin, Jones studiously addressing a boxy acoustic guitar and Bonham nonchalantly rattling a tambourine.

Of all the acts to play Unplugged so far, only REM, another folk-rock group with big amplifiers, will have come better prepared.

But there are still some big ifs to be negotiated. Though he has noticeably softened his staunch don't-look-back approach, Plant, the only one of the three with a thriving solo career to protect, still has reservations. "I really want to write with Jimmy again," he said in the sleevenotes to a recent CD re-issue, "but I'm not sure if we should call it Led Zeppelin, because once that happens, it becomes so much bigger." Bigger as in box office, which is why MTV are so anxious to invoke the old Zeppelin name, and to get Bonham's son, Jason, himself a muscular tub-thumper, on the drumstool.

For his part, Plant is believed to prefer something along the lines of "Page and Plant", possibly cutting out Jones. It would inevitably reduce the size and modify the expectations of the audience.

At this delicate stage everybody is staying tight-lipped, in public anyway. Whether Led Zeppelin flies again under old or new colours may well be decided by Robert Plant after his solo world tour winds up in Mexico City at the end of the month.

Edited June 10, 2013 by kenog