Rock god with a grip on reality (RP Interview)

[Cat]

Rock god with a grip on reality

Telegraph, (UK) 2/22/2003

America has more tolerant ideas about the longevity of the great British rock star than we do. Tomorrow night in New York, a clutch of our more seasoned artists are up for Grammy Awards.

From the new wave era, these include Sting and Elvis Costello. Among the nominees from rock's golden age at the turn of the 1970s are Elton John, Peter Gabriel, David Bowie and - perhaps the biggest surprise to UK observers - Robert Plant.

Even in his prime as the tight-trousered shrieker in Led Zeppelin, Plant was never afforded much respect in this country. Zeppelin were seen as both boorish Black Countrymen and bombastic theatricals, peddling stodgy blues back to America.

For many here, their main bequest to our national heritage has been a tawdry urban myth involving a groupie and a goldfish. Oh, and there was Stairway To Heaven, which nobody will ever admit to liking, but which mysteriously continues to top "Greatest Rock Song Ever" charts.

Since Led Zeppelin split in 1980, Plant's solo albums have scarcely met with great warmth. Titles such as Now and Zen suggested that he was possibly not stretching himself. But to his credit, he has avoided full-blown Zeppelin reunions, instead occasionally hooking back up with Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page for such dignified ventures as 1993's "unplugged"-style Unledded, and 1998's Walking Into Clarksdale.

When I saw him perform at last summer's Isle of Wight festival, he was a shining light at a dull, directionless event. Then came his seventh solo album, the mystical, exploratory Dreamland. "I feel like I've blasted through a wall," he told one interviewer on its release, "and I'm coming out the other side."

Though prone to such hilariously melodramatic pronouncements (or, in fact, because of them), Plant is superb company when I meet him at Real World, the cosy, country pile-ish studio near Bath.

He is recording elsewhere, but has popped over for a spot of lunch, and to challenge studio proprietor and fellow Grammy nominee Peter Gabriel to a game of tennis. "I hear he's put on a few pounds," says Plant, "and I rather fancy my chances." It really is just like punk never happened.

In conversation, Plant is a cross between Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now and Uncle Monty from Withnail and I - equal parts guru and luvvie, his thread almost impossible to predict until his grandstand conclusion (quite like Stairway to Heaven itself, then).

However, for a 1970s rock god, Plant has an unusually sound grip on reality. In dismissing a question about his nomination for best album and best male rock vocal performance Grammys, he winds up talking with some passion about Iraq.

"Sorry," he says eventually, "Our music is just fluff. If I get two Grammys it'll be great, but at the moment they're not of any huge importance."

Music, though, is clearly at the very core Plant's being. In one very short hour, he touches upon John Coltrane, the White Stripes, Tuareg griots, Love's Arthur Lee, Alison Krauss, and 16th-century English balladry - and all with the wide-eyed amazement of a teenager.

In recent weeks, he reveals, he, Page and Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones have worked on a DVD of live Zep footage, and a live album recorded in Los Angeles in 1972. "I don't want it to be some kind of memorabilia thing in a pub machine - you put a pound in. Page and I developed an affinity creatively that was really strong. We could almost read each other's minds. Now I'm ecstatic that I'm about to go on to the Radio 2 playlist. This is as important to me now as that was then."

You can see how the idea of picking up where Zeppelin left off might not appeal to Plant. As their career trajectory went off the scale, their world grew darker, with drugs and white magic afoot. Plant, however, was soon forced to rethink when his son Karac died of a viral infection, aged six.

"Before that," he recalls, "I was just on this fantastic joyride. Suddenly everything changed. I realised that we were all on our way out, no matter what. I had to come back to earth. So I set fire to many aspects of my lifestyle, and became much more focused on my home."

Just then, a door opens. Plant calls out, "Ah, Nastase!", and we are joined by Peter Gabriel in an orange jogging top. For one horrifying moment, I fear that I am about to be drawn into a game of doubles along with Nick Mason from Pink Floyd, before Gabriel saunters off.

"It's difficult to get your head around the changes of your life," Plant says, launching into one final oration. "In the early days we were changing rock and roll. I was part of a combination of minds and energy that did some amazing stuff. Then I just did afterwards what I had done before. I kept looking. For that," he concludes, allowing himself a craggy smile of satisfaction, "I think I have fared better than most."

link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml...2/bmplant22.xml

[eternal light]

Even in his prime as the tight-trousered shrieker in Led Zeppelin, Plant was never afforded much respect in this country. Zeppelin were seen as both boorish Black Countrymen and bombastic theatricals, peddling stodgy blues back to America.

For many here, their main bequest to our national heritage has been a tawdry urban myth involving a groupie and a goldfish. Oh, and there was Stairway To Heaven, which nobody will ever admit to liking, but which mysteriously continues to top "Greatest Rock Song Ever" charts.

Do they really live in such a vacuum? It was not a goldfish, btw. Perhaps he was oversensitive to their indifference and they reacted to that with a sense of bored disdain, or maybe it was class consciousness masked by a facade of feigned lack of sympathy?

It's perhaps like telling an actor who tries to get you to feel something that you just don't care because it makes you look at life in a way that bothers you. Maybe he was trying to get an audience to care, that at the time did not want to do so. He expressed raw, vulnerable emotion that maybe at first did not resonate very well with the tradition of a British stiff upper lip; that fear of vulnerability can be too risky at times. Sometimes a culture values saving face. China and Japan also have a tradition of saving face.

Once validated by another discriminating audience, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, et al, it was finally cool to approve of him, at least in some circles. Also, when his playful side emerges, I think London audiences find him more entertaining.

In contrast, New York audiences received him very strongly, though, and New York audiences are notorious for being difficult to impress, because they've often seen so much. New York audiences can be very validating when they approve of you, harrowing when they disapprove.

But Robert Plant has a natural empathy with audiences that often allows him to win them over. He has a natural way of endearing himself to them.