Durable Plant Not Easily Led

[SteveAJones]

Durable Plant not easily Led

ROBERT Plant is happy with an eclectic, prolific solo career.

Mark Edwards

From: The Sunday Times

September 30, 2010 12:00AM

The weight of expectation never leaves Robert Plant's shoulders: When will he give in and re-form Led Zeppelin? Plant, 62, shows absolutely no inclination to do any such thing. Instead, he has pursued a varied and eclectic solo career, "springing like some ever-greying Zebedee", as he puts it, from musical genre to musical genre, resisting the entreaties of others to stay in one place.

"Whenever I feel a shroud of cliche dangling over my head, people dig me in the ribs and say, 'Yeah, but it's great'," he says.

The last time I spoke to Plant, towards the end of 2007, he was both revelling in the early acclaim that his album with Alison Krauss, Raising Sand, was accruing and rehearsing for the one-off Led Zeppelin reunion show, trying to find an old voice, an old personality, some old chemistry. I ask him now why that rapturously received show didn't lead to a sustained reunion.

"I had a meeting with myself on the side of a mountain in Wales, and I thought, 'What is this? Who's rowing this boat?' I didn't think it was time for plastic surgery yet, and I couldn't see myself working out in the gym next to that guy from Aerosmith. I just want to sing songs that take me to a place, lyrically and emotionally, that's like a psychedelic campfire. That's all I was looking for, really."

While anyone who has followed Plant's career for any length of time will not have been too surprised that he resisted the $200 million apparently on offer for a Led Zep tour, it was slightly more surprising that he didn't make another album with Krauss, given that Raising Sand appeared to offer the lyrical and emotional campfire he was seeking. It also won several Grammy awards.

"That was quite a night at the Grammys," Plant says. "We stopped Coldplay in their tracks. They'd been sat right at the bottom of the ceremonial steps, so naturally they thought they were going to win everything. They kept trying to stand up: Chris [Martin] was up and down like a barmaid's drawers. Lifting out of his seat, then sat back down again."

Plant's cynical side quickly kicks in: "That night I had some friends. People spoke to me who hadn't previously and haven't since. I was a photo opportunity. I spoke to Rod Stewart the next day on the phone. I was trying to get him to write a foreword to the Sunflower Blues festival in Clarksdale, Mississippi. That year they were honouring Sam Cooke, and I thought, if anyone owes Sam Cooke a few paragraphs, it's got to be Rod the Mod. He said, 'Ere, you got a Grammy last night.' I said, 'Six, you schmuck!"'

In fact, Plant and Krauss did try to re-create the magic of Raising Sand, booking into the same studio with the same band and the same producer, T Bone Burnett, but the sessions didn't work out.

"This was new for me. I'd never been in anything that simply hadn't worked before," Plant says. "People may criticise parts of Shaken 'n' Stirred, but I still think it's a monumental moment in anti-pop. I've always believed in what I'm doing. Still, how many times are you going to fall upon songs that suit people with two voices that are from places as far along the spectrum as me and Alison? Raising Sand was a miracle."

Plant then headed off to try some more tracks with Daniel Lanois, best known for producing U2 and Bob Dylan; the idea being that if anything good developed, they would reconvene with Krauss. By this time, however, Krauss was keen to reunite with her old band, Union Station, so the idea of a follow-up to Raising Sand was left on hold.

"When Alison said it was time to go back to Union Station, I said, 'Fine, I'll go and see Buddy,' " Plant says. Buddy is Buddy Miller, the producer and guitarist on Plant's new album, Band of Joy.

The music that Plant and Miller cherish is the same: a rootsy blend of folk, country, blues and soul. Plant clearly believes he has found a musical soulmate, as well as a great guitarist and producer.

The material on Band of Joy ranges from a 19th-century poem, Even This Shall Pass Away, and a traditional country song, Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down, through 1960s soul and pop obscurities You Can't Buy My Love and Falling in Love Again, rousing covers of Los Lobos' Angel Dance and Richard Thompson's House of Cards, to two tracks from The Great Destroyer album by the Minnesota slowcore band Low, Silver Rider and Monkey. These are the closest things on the album to the Raising Sand vibe, with the country singer Patty Griffin proving another exceptional vocal foil for Plant.

Those who study their music history will know that Band of Joy was the name of the group that Plant and John Bonham played in before the formation of Led Zeppelin. So, does reviving this name mean that Plant thinks his musical journey has come full circle?

"Yes, I think you could say that," he says.

"Before the epiphany, and that great moment in a basement in Gerrard Street when John and Jimmy and John-Paul and I all stood together scratching our heads, and lightning crackled above us, and the gods roared, and William Blake wrote a new poem from beneath the ground, and all Britain was reunited - before all of that, the Band of Joy was doing very well, starving and thieving, and believing with arrogance and great zest that we had the actual key to the future of a particular kind of music.

"We stuck to it as best we could. It was tough going. Like so many bands. You're so committed, and you believe, but you know things are passing you by and the years are going by. We almost took off. We caused a stir that wasn't quite enough of a stir.

"Now it's exactly the same with the new Band of Joy.

"It's causing a stir, but it probably won't be quite the stir it ought to be. And we won't change the face of music, but it's wonderful, and we don't care, and everyone will go back to their garrets and be where they were before. But then we'll rise again, and William Blake will trumpet through the sod, and Denmark Street will wobble, and all the guitars will be half-price."

This is the kind of language Plant uses whenever the conversation veers too close to Led Zeppelin: an allusive and elusive mix of mythology and nonsense. It serves several purposes. First, it's fun. Second, it allows him to acknowledge that his old band was enormously successful and is widely revered, while undercutting any hint of arrogance. Third, it acts as a decoy, Plant hurling odd references into the conversation and thus minimising the risk of penetrating follow-up questions. But hang on: did he just admit he wants to make a second album with the same line-up?

"Yes," he says. "I would like to do this ad infinitum, because I'm learning all the time, having a great time. The people are spectacular, it's a very encouraging environment."

He believes he has found a musical world that recalls not only his original Band of Joy, but also parts of Led Zeppelin's third album, the record on which the group Rolling Stone called "the heaviest band in the world" retreated to the country and found their (relatively) quieter side.

"It's a place where I can actually sing, instead of just trying to compete," Plant says. "I like that zone of being able to hear myself sing. I don't want clutter. I don't want manly volume for some vapid, masculine cause and effect. I love rock music, but I don't like superfluous gesture."

The Sunday Times

http://www.theaustra...6-1225931954135

[SuperDave]

Thanks for the article Steve. That was a great read and lots of great insight from Robert.