The 1990s band that made Robert Plant want to give up: “I don’t belong any more”
By the time that Led Zeppelin broke up, Robert Plant wasn’t one to rest on his laurels for too long.
There was no hope for him to try and find another group that could match what Zeppelin did, and even if he tried to do that, there would have been millions of people who would probably resent him for even trying to match the kind of majesty that songs like ‘Kashmir’ and ‘Stairway to Heaven’ had when he was in his prime. Plant knew that it was time for him to move on, but there were also more than a few times when he felt that his days of playing were over when he saw the new school.
That said, Plant should at least be commended for trying to go in a different direction whenever he made a new album. The idea of him staying at the same ‘Percy’ persona was always going to have limits, and even when he was working on some of his finest solo albums, there was a common understanding that those insane vocal leaps just weren’t in the cards for him anymore. But that didn’t mean that he needed to completely switch up his sound every single time he played, either.
It was a novel idea to see one of the biggest rock stars in the world try his hand at being new wave, but the idea of Plant being David Byrne was a little too weird for most people to take in. They didn’t want to see one of the greatest frontmen of all time try to play that kind of music, but it’s not like you couldn’t see what he saw, either. Talking Heads were pulling at the fabric of rock and roll, and a lot of the younger generation were ready to go on that ride.
And while a lot of the alternative kids could see where Byrne and co. were going on those records, Thom Yorke was paying closer attention to their approach to music. Byrne wanted to deconstruct the idea of what a rock band could be, and when Radiohead ended up taking their name from one of their songs, they were looking to do the exact same thing once they started to become the biggest band on the planet.
OK Computer was one of the finest albums of the 1990s, but on every subsequent record, Yorke was doing everything in his power to get out of the usual rock and roll cliches. He didn’t want to be a part of the grand history of rock and roll bands that get too stale, and even when looking at some of their biggest albums after the 1990s, a lot of them were about taking on new creative endeavours.
And since none of Radiohead’s habits came back to the blues, Plant was worried that his days were numbered when they came out, saying, “I saw Radiohead in 1999 after I had last worked with Jimmy Page. I liked the fact that [the band] was its own master, just like Page and myself were. We could do whatever we wanted, and it stuck, for some reason. The world embraced it.”
“As it went along, it made no great effort to emulate anything that went before – a natural flow of song and craft. When I saw Radiohead, I thought, well, maybe I don’t belong in the game any more.”
Robert Plant
There were still bands that were operating with the same mentality that Zeppelin were back in the day, but when you look at those bands in the 2000s, they weren’t exactly breaking new ground. There are always going to be bands that ride the coattails of Zeppelin, but it got to the point where that retro band could be insufferable. That band was Jet for a while, then it turned into Wolfmother, and while Greta Van Fleet are trying their damndest to make their own legacy, it’s always going to be lingering in the shadows of what Plant was doing before they were even born.
So while Plant didn’t see a way that he could fit in with a band like Radiohead, he understood that music needed to change for it to keep growing. He was content to make his own ditties once in a while, but the fact that even he needed to move on from what Zeppelin had done really says a lot about the kind of artist that he was. Most people can find their sound and stick to it, but both Yorke and Plant were never satisfied being in one place for too long.
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