“Best on the planet”: The artist Robert Plant called his musical best friend
Not every musician is into the business of making friends. Although there are many times when bands stay together for years and have to see each other every day when they’re on tour, there are only a few times when every musician manages to stay on the best of terms with their friends before they start growing resentful or bitter of them. Robert Plant may have certainly had his share of good times working with Led Zeppelin, but he always felt that he had a close bond with this musical genius.
Then again, seeing the construction of Zeppelin mythmaking has become interesting over the years. Even though many people assume that Plant and Jimmy Page would be joined at the hip and call each other up on Christmas and birthdays, Plant had already developed an intense bond with John Bonham before he even joined, with both of them being from Black Country and crossing each other on the live circuit.
Over the years, though, Plant has had somewhat of a confidante in Page. While No Quarter: Unledded still feels like a firm slap in the face to John Paul Jones’s involvement on those early Zeppelin tracks, it’s easy to see Page and Plant working off each other well in their older age, almost resurrecting their old songs and trying to find some hidden magic in there that hadn’t been touched on before.
But the last thing Plant wanted to be was a nostalgia act. He was more than happy to get together with Zeppelin to honour their legacy, but the chances of them getting together for a full tour didn’t sit well with him when he was more than happy to take chances in his solo career on albums like Now and Zen.
And in the 2000s, Raising Sand is probably the best that most fans could have hoped from an older version of ‘The Golden God.’ The days of him reaching for the top of his range were over, and hearing him bounce off of Allison Krauss was the equivalent of getting a lowkey version of Led Zeppelin III, relying more on the folksy side of his sound while still reminding everyone that he was the one who pulled off ‘The Battle of Evermore.’
Beyond working as a creative partner, though, Plant felt that he had a true connection with Krauss outside of their music, saying, “Alison is one of my best friends on the planet. She’s really a great, spectacular, quite profound and also incredibly funny person.” While any plans for a potential sequel to Raising Sand didn’t come until 2021’s Raise the Roof, hearing them live is a much better indication of what they can do together.
Outside of Krauss’s spectacular voice on her own songs, Plant has been free to shake things up whenever he plays live. He may do justice as one of the greatest backup vocalists in the world on Krauss’s songs, but hearing her play the role of the town crier on ‘The Battle of Evermore’ is absolutely breathtaking, as well as the odd moment where Plant dips his toes into his past on midtempo Zeppelin material like ‘Gallows Pole.’
Some fans can complain all they want to about Plant and Krauss spending ages crafting the right album, but what they do isn’t about chasing the momentum of their last record. It’s about finding something that they can fall in love with musically, and whenever they do make a record, it still comes from the joy they have of playing with each other.
