The song Robert Plant called “a perfect piece of recording”
Robert Plant was never all that interested in focusing everything he had on the stage.
Led Zeppelin were certainly a powerhouse wherever they played, but some of the greatest records that they ever made are documents of how far they had come as songwriters when they locked in with what Jimmy Page was playing. And when looking back at some of the biggest tunes in his record collection, he wanted to make songs that hit him the same way that old blues records hit him when he was first figuring out what he could do with his voice.
But the idea of becoming the greatest blues singer in rock and roll felt like a pipe dream at the time. No one was going to replace what people like Steve Marriott were doing at the time, and even if Page’s first idea was getting someone like Terry Reid in Led Zeppelin, Plant was always meant to be that shining god at the front of the stage. He was everything that a rock and roll star was supposed to be, but not all that posturing was done by accident when he first started singing.
The biggest names in blues were known to put a little bit of their personality into every single song they sang. It was practically a rule for people to make the most heartwrenching tunes that they could and leave everything on the stage, and even if Plant wasn’t going to reach the same level as Howlin’ Wolf or anything, he could try his best to get anywhere close to his tone of voice when singing ‘The Lemon Song’. Then again, he wasn’t the first kid who had the idea of getting the most out of his scream whenever he sang the blues.
The beginnings of rock and roll had always been about trying to copy what people like Little Richard had been doing back in the day, but there were others who seemed to take the howl of the blues and make it sound even more dangerous. Ozzy Osbourne would soon be making his own demented howls in Black Sabbath, but a lot of the appeal behind that kind of screaming came when Plant heard the song ‘Love Me’ by The Phantom.
And for anyone who picked this song up back in 1958, they were in for one hell of a ride. No one seemed to have that same kind of ominousness to their voice, and even if he was decked out like The Lone Ranger with a massive mask across his face, you could tell that he wasn’t messing around from the moment that he opened his mouth. He sounded like he had some real emotional torture come his way, and Plant wanted to get as close to that kind of music as he could.
Compared to everything that he did with Zeppelin and beyond, Plant still felt that The Phantom’s single was one of the best vocals that he had ever heard, saying, “Because he was on Dot, he was presumed to be Pat Boone’s brother, but because he wore a mask like The Lone Ranger, nobody could tell. (His real name is said to be Marty Lott.) It’s a perfect piece of recording – you can’t understand a word, and you don’t care!” But since when has music been about knowing every single detail about a performance?
This was the age before people were laying every single Easter Egg they could into a record, and when you listen to that first scream, you’re also hearing the room it was recorded in. The ambience of the room that echoes off the speakers is still one of the most haunting pieces of 1950s rock, followed by the kind of unhinged vocal performance that would have had Screamin’ Jay Hawkins taking notes.
The thought of a song like this sharing time on the charts with someone like Frank Sinatra probably wasn’t in the cards, but you could tell that Plant got a lot of his confidence from songs like this. No one really needed to be screaming their lungs out on those soft rock tunes, but since the golden age of rock and roll gave way to people like Fabian and Frankie Avalon, we needed someone like Plant to break out the ‘Percy’ persona for everyone to be truly wowed by rock and roll again.
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