The greatest rock and roll songs of all time, according to Robert Plant
For many people, the emergence of a band like Led Zeppelin at the tail end of the 1960s would have been their first exposure to rock and roll and a life-changing discovery that opened their world up to a whole new style of music. The sheer power behind Robert Plant’s vocals, along with the impassioned guitar work of Jimmy Page and the thumping rhythm section of John Paul Jones and John Bonham, was a true spectacle, and very few bands captured the spirit of what rock music could be like they managed to do.
However, it should be noted that their work, while exceptional and revolutionary as it may have seemed to listeners, was, of course, heavily informed by the rock and roll music that came long before. They themselves would’ve been influenced by the music of the previous decade that was emerging from the US, taking cues from the true progenitors of rock and roll who incorporated a mixture of blues, R&B and soul into their music long before Led Zeppelin came along with their own interpretation on the style.
Seeing as many of the members had previously enjoyed spells in far more traditional rock and roll acts, with Page having been a session player for early rock groups in the UK, such as Carter-Lewis and the Southerners and Mickey Finn and the Blue Men, before becoming a member of the Yardbirds alongside Jeff Beck, and Plant and Bonham having first met as part of the psychedelic blues outfit Band of Joy, there were clear signs that they were taking plenty of influence from prior musical trends when they finally formed their own group together in 1968.
Not only that, but there was plenty of exceptional and revolutionary music happening contemporaneously that they would’ve been exposed to and taken plenty of cues from. Led Zeppelin didn’t exist in a bubble of their own. They were clearly admirers of great music and used their influences alongside their own strengths to create the marvels that they did.
In a 2005 interview with American broadcaster Charlie Rose, Plant opened up on some of the songs that he considered to be the greatest rock and roll tracks of all time and listed four major inspirations from the first wave of rock and roll that came out of the US during the 1950s as being some of the main songs to have guided him as an artist. Singling out Elvis Presley’s ‘A Big Hunk O’ Love’, Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘Smokestack Lightnin’’, Link Wray’s ‘Rumble and Dion’s ‘Lovers Who Wander’, he noted how some of these tracks, while not necessarily fitting directly under the rock and roll genre tag, were responsible for leading to “so much beautiful, extravagant music”.
Commenting specifically on Howlin’ Wolf and how he inspired Plant and Led Zeppelin’s style, he noted that “we hammed it up, trying to get as black as we could,” adding that “as they say in England, a miss is as good as a mile, but occasionally we got there.” While his endeavours to mimic the artistry of Howlin’ Wolf were only occasionally successful by his reckoning, plenty of other rock acts followed, which were equally important to Plant and his musical endeavours.
He would also go on to note Jefferson Airplane’s ‘White Rabbit’, Love’s ‘A House is Not a Motel’ and Bob Dylan’s ‘One More Cup of Coffee’ as being among his favourite rock and roll tracks of all time, despite all having emerged from a different period to the four previous tracks he named. Speaking on the importance of Dylan, Plant would add that “he was the guy who woke us all up” before adding that “[out of] all of those people who were around, Dylan made it sexy, and he also brought it home in such a vital way.”
While many Dylan contemporaries, such as Woody Guthrie and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, could’ve easily made their way into Plant’s selections, it was he who he selected and held in such high esteem among the other incredible songs that he picked.
