The rap-metal album Robert Plant adored: “I like very much”
Following the collapse of The Yardbirds, Jimmy Page, unwilling to recede back to his fruitful career as a sessionist, sought to rebuild a band fit to rival The Who and The Rolling Stones. As the curator of Led Zeppelin, Page did just that. With Robert Plant, John Bonham and John Paul Jones on board, the band established a heavier blues approach, which ultimately bridged the gulf between heavy metal and prog-rock.
As Page built his new four-piece, he selected bandmates carefully on the basis of talent and demeanour. After catching wind of a unique rock singer from Birmingham, Page put his nose to the trail and found Plant at the other end. At the time, Plant was in a sorry financial state following the breakup of his early band, Band of Joy. “I was appearing at this college when Jimmy turned up and asked me if I’d like to join the Yardbirds,” Plant told Classic Rock of his first meeting with Page in 2008 “I knew the Yardbirds had done a lot of work in America – which to me meant audiences who would want to know what I might have to offer – so, naturally, I was very interested.”
The frontman sang Jefferson Airplane’s song ‘Somebody To Love’ to Page during this first encounter. “When I auditioned him and heard him sing, I immediately thought there must be something wrong with him personality-wise or that he had to be impossible to work with because I just could not understand why, after he told me he’d been singing for a few years already, he hadn’t become a big name yet,” Page later reflected. “So I had him down to my place for a little while just to sort of check him out, and we got along great. No problems.”
Indeed, Plant was something of a revelation in the realm of rock singing; not only did he have the projection of a perturbed lion, but his dynamic pitch control and range were simply breathtaking. As Page pointed out, Plant’s social compatibility defied the unfortunate rules of perfection. Additional to Plant’s appeal, where Page was concerned, was his deep appreciation for roots blues music.
Many rock musicians seek a package of instrumental talent, songwriting tact and vocal virtuosity when appraising artists. As for Plant, he has always concentrated on vocals with a sort of tunnel vision that almost disregards the surrounding musical style. With an early attachment to the blues, he became particularly enamoured with the powerful, emotive timbres of Howlin’ Wolf and Willie Dixon.
Over time, Plant welcomed all manner of vocalists into his record collection and, hence, heart, including The Cure’s Robert Smith and the extremely gifted Egyptian singer Oum Kalthoum, whom he deems the “best” he’s ever heard. As these two examples demonstrate, Plant is open to a broad range of styles and doesn’t necessarily merit technical ability, instead favouring unique voices with which one can establish an intimate connection.
Plant is no stick in the mud. As the punk wave broke out in the mid-1970s, bands like Sex Pistols and The Clash seemed to oppose the complexities of prog rock. However, Plant took no sies and even became a rather ardent fan of The Damned. “It had so much drive about it. That was where things needed to go,” he said of the band’s youthful intensity in a 2018 conversation with Q.
As the waves of punk crashed and petered out into new wave and synth-pop, the 1980s also saw the rise of rap music. Like many rock fans, Plant is a tentative adherent to the genre, opening his ears to anything that breaks the mould. He became particularly susceptible to rap singing with a rock ‘n’ roll setting, especially when fronted by vocalist Chuck Mosley.
When picking out some of his all-time favourite albums for Q, Plant showed some love for the rap metal band Faith No More and their early masterpiece of 1987, Introduce Yourself. “Their first album. It’s like, I, me, listen to this! And if you don’t like it, fuck off!!! You can’t spend all your life whimpering away about the ex-wife,” Plant exclaimed, comically observing his surprising selection. “The vocal attitude – the hard, heavy garage rap – I like very much.”
Although Faith No More released We Care a Lot as their debut album in 1985, they consider Introduce Yourself their proper debut due to the limited availability and, hence, underwhelming reaction to the first. Alongside fellow rap metal artists like Rage Against the Machine, Faith No More was instrumental in the rise of the nu-metal scene. Though Mosley was fired from the band after We Care a Lot, he is regarded as one of the earliest vocalists in the subgenre.
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