Why Robert Plant is baffled by a Led Zeppelin reunion: “I feel slightly disappointed”
The reunion tour is always a bit of a gamble when it comes to legacy acts. There are bound to be people who want to see them again, but is it really fair for them to expect older artists to play the same raucous music they made in their prime decades after the fact? That doesn’t really seem fair, so Robert Plant didn’t even try with Led Zeppelin and is more confused as to why someone would want to hear him again in the first place.
First of all, any Led Zeppelin reunion in this day and age shouldn’t work on principle. Since John Bonham was the rock-solid beat behind the group and managed to beat the life out of the drums that no one else could muster, you’d be a fool to think that the surviving members could find anyone else who could match him.
Ever since Zeppelin fell apart in the 1980s, Plant seemed quite content exploring as many new genres as he could. The rock legends were already known for mixing things up on their later releases, so hearing him adopt new trends on albums such as Now and Zen was, at the least, interesting.
While fans got a whiff of Zeppelin when Plant hooked up with Jimmy Page for a handful of projects in the 1990s, that was really going to be the extent of it. Outside of a few one-off performances with Jason Bonham in the 2000s, Plant seemed much more comfortable working his voice into a bluegrass context with Alisson Krauss on albums like Raising Sand.
Despite getting the call from his former guitarist to play some shows, Plant thought that going back to the old repertoire didn’t make any sense, saying, “I feel for the guy. He knows he’s got the headlines if he wants them. But I don’t know what he’s trying to do. So, I feel slightly disappointed and baffled. A couple of years ago, I said, ‘If you’ve got anything acoustic, let me know. I’ll give it a whirl.’ He just walked away.”
Then again, Page getting back into the action with Zeppelin is much different than Plant agreeing to a reunion. After all, Zeppelin was Page’s band from the very beginning, and seeing his musical baby suddenly fall apart in the 1980s led to him slowly integrating himself back into the world, whether that was working with groups like The Black Crowes or putting out the odd solo outfit or supergroup like The Firm.
That’s not to say that Plant doesn’t look back fondly on those days. If you look at the material that he has been performing with Krauss as of late, he does end up throwing in a handful of Zeppelin’s downtempo material, either trying his hand at the acoustic ditty ‘Gallows Pole’ from Led Zeppelin III or having Krauss deliver the response vocals when performing ‘The Battle of Evermore’.
But Plant not wanting to come back into the fold may just be a case of him being realistic. Many people can try to touch the sky every time they step up to the microphone, but sometimes it’s easier to know one’s limits rather than do something that might potentially wreck their voice if they’re not careful.
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