For Robert Plant, Led Zeppelin was ‘something fantastic’ – but multimillion-pound offers to re-form are not going to tempt him away from the musical path that has given him a new lease of creative life, as he explains on a stroll up Primrose Hill
A CAR SCREECHES to a stop at the corner of Fitzroy Road, in Camden Town in London. A hand reaches over and opens the passenger door: "Stand on that corner and wait." You take in your surroundings: well-dressed women walking their dogs, a couple of boulangeries, the odd bistro. Suspiciously normal. After a few minutes, out of nowhere, you hear a whisper in your ear: "Fancy coming for a walk in the park with an old man?" Best offer I've had all year.
In the time it takes to walk across the road and into Primrose Hill park Robert Plant has already squeezed in stories about Noddy Holder’s father, BP Fallon and Alexis Korner. He is dressed like a teenage backpacker, and an impressive array of blond-grey ringlets still spills down his back. “When I go to north Africa they think I’m a chick,” he says. He spots an empty bench and breaks into a trot: “Quick, before anyone else gets it.”
An avuncular presence, he wears his legacy lightly, has a wicked sense of humour and tells you some jaw-dropping stories. Off the record.
"It's strangely appropriate you being here, because this all started in Dublin," he says. "About 10 or 12 years ago I was in that lovely old theatre the Olympia, to see Emmylou Harris. Playing with her that night was an amazing guy called Brian Blade, but what really caught my eye was the guitarist, Buddy Miller. He played with such finesse but still with those jagged edges. You know, I think what Daniel Lanois brought to that album [Harris's Wrecking Ball] was revelatory, and I sort of refocused after that. I wanted to turn the dial, to be shaken and stirred a bit. A singer should never be typecast. I did all that hammer-of-the-gods stuff, I lived hammer of the gods. It was time for something different."
That something different was Raising Sand, 2007's extraordinary pairing with Alison Krauss, a rootsy Americana affair that won five Grammy awards, including for album of the year. Plant's commitment to exploring folk and country stylings continues with the just released Band of Joy, featuring and co-produced by Buddy Miller. It means the £200 million cheque sitting on the table for a Led Zeppelin reunion still goes uncashed.
“I went to see Them Crooked Vultures , and my ears were bleeding for days after,” he says. “Others may want , but I’m doing this now. I’m playing with a fantastic band, exploring all this magnificent music, both antique and modern, and, as you’ll see tonight, we can play great little venues and really get a vibe going. Zep in their prime, I’m so proud of that, but let’s have a little decorum about it now.”
At 63 he doesn't want to be singing Stairway to Heavento 20,000 people a night. With Zeppelin he was the prowling, priapic rock god, the best rock'n'roll singer of his or perhaps any other generation. But how much of the famous falsetto remains? "Oh, I can still get up there," he says, laughing. "But I'd pass out if I had to do that falsetto all the time. I did this charity show for Wolverhampton Wanderers a few weeks ago. I did Ramble Onand Over the Hills and Far Away, and I did go right up there. You could see all these people who were eating their five-course dinners nudging themselves. But rock'n'roll is all about the frontman, about the adrenalin, and I've been making music in that style for 44 years.
“But, encouraged by Alison on the last album, I’ve found this amazing alternative way of singing. My voice is navigating in a different direction now. It’s more singing around the hearth at night-time with fiddles to this beautiful acoustic music. I think I’ve taken my vocal style and fitted very comfortably into that world. When you see us live you’ll hear the vocal harmonies. There’s six of us singing together sometimes.”
He has called the new album Band of Joyafter the band he and John Bonham were in immediately before Led Zeppelin. "I was totally into soul before Zep," he says. "The first album I ever got was an import copy of James Brown's Live at the Apollo. I remember playing all the all-nighters: the Twisted Wheel, the Catacombs. I was playing support to Lee Dorsey and Buddy Guy. We got Northern Soul, which was a bastardised version of black American soul. It was all amphetamine sulphate at the all-nighters in the days before we all got trippy. Back when I was 17 I recorded a song by Young Rascals , and here I am 44 years later, back with American music."
The album is his interpretation of various musical stylings. Opening with a cover of a Los Lobos song, which sounds like a Cajun Arcade Fire, it also includes a countrified version of the soul classic Falling in Love Again, the rockabilly Can't Buy My Love, two visits to the catalogue of the indie slowcore band Low and two "antique pieces", Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Downand Cindy, I'll Marry You Some Day.
“We got it all down in just 10 days,” Plant says. “I always find those first four hours in the studio with a bunch of new musicians are really crucial. You barely know their first names, but you just dive in. That first session we got two songs finished. I felt like I was at the head of a Viking boat, discovering all these new territories. We recorded it in Nashville, and just travelling about, when I was there, to the places where some of these songs had originally come from was a real education. I met all these guys up in the Tennessee mountains. I met Wanda Jackson out in the Mojave desert. She’s 78, and she has this beehive and is telling you all these Elvis stories. She’s working with Jack White now, which is an excellent idea.”
He has become something of a musical anthropologist since his time in north Africa. “I used to pick up all these cassette tapes in the souk of Berber music and work out the chords when I got home. It’s a music that runs parallel to ours. I remember a singer, Ibrahim, telling me how, when he was working in the docks in Algeria, he heard James Brown for the first time. He was going, ‘I recognise that.’ The links are all there, the links between Irish and English folk music and southern US country music being particularly strong. I love tinkering around with all this stuff. I think of it as an adventure.”
At the show that night, in a deconsecrated church in the West End of London – “Welcome to the House of the Holy,” Plant says by way of introduction – you can see how enthused he is by his band of Nashville A-list session musicians and how well his new, caressing vocal style meshes with that of his new vocal partner, the country queen Patty Griffin.
“The creative push we all got from this album means that Patty and I are talking about writing together, doing some original material,” Plant says. “She’s got this place in Nashville which just looks ideal. For me it’s no longer to do with ego or even having a visible success. My past was something fantastic – and I want it to remain that way. I’m fine where I am now, getting right down into the earth of music.”
Band of Joy
is on Decca. Robert Plant and band play the Olympia, Dublin, on November 1st
Under the influence: some of the singers Robert Plant likes to listen to
“I love listening to other singers, hearing what they’re doing with their voices, how they breathe at different times, how they phrase certain words” says Plant.
“I’m listening to a lot of Talk Talk these days – great band. And can I just say thank God for Band of Horses? What a band: a real revelation.
"When Patty Griffin did the first vocals for this album I was telling her to go for a real Cocteau Twins sound: I just love Elizabeth Fraser's voice, and to hear what she does with Tim Buckley's Song for the Sirenon the This Mortal Coilalbum is a wonderful thing.
“I like Imelda May, and her husband is a really good guitarist. David Hidalgo has an incredibly rich voice.
“I got Alan McGee to DJ at a family wedding recently, and I was on at him all day to play some 13th Floor Elevators: Roky Erickson is a great vocalist.
"My favourite Zep song would probably be Kashmir, and our most underrated album would be Presence. When that came out it was all 'uh-oh' from the critics, but now it's seen as a milestone."
