‘Your Long Journey’: Robert Plant’s favourite post-Led Zeppelin song
Ageing gracefully is easier said than done in rock music. Many musicians are happy to consider only their bank balance rather than continuing to seek artistic fulfilment as they grow old. However, former Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant is an exception. He still wakes up in the morning with a fire burning in his belly to create.
Following Led Zeppelin’s one-off reunion at the O2 Arena in 2007, Plant was essentially handed a blank cheque to reunite with the band on a full-time basis for a world tour. Although Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones were prepared to hit the road, no amount of money could have persuaded Plant it was a good idea. After the show, he felt flat and deflated, which was not a sensation he wanted to re-live on a nightly basis despite the financial incentives.
The idea of performing a residency in a soulless Las Vegas casino is Plant’s nightmare. While his current brand of solo material is more suited to intimate theatres rather than arenas, that’s how he likes it. Plant’s days of chart-topping records may be over, but he’s making music that represents him as an older man. Although he’ll always primarily be known as Led Zeppelin’s frontman, he’s made far more albums since the band ended in 1980 than with the group.
Over the years, Plant has regularly spoken about his disconnect with the band’s material in recent years. During a conversation with UCR as part of their ‘Nights’ radio show, the singer shunned his contribution to ‘Stairway To Heaven‘. He explained: “The construction of the song, the actual musical construction, is very good. It’s one of those moments that really can stand without a vocal and, in fact, it will stand again without a vocal, I’m sure, because it’s a fine piece of music. Lyrically, now, I can’t relate to it, because it was so long ago. I would have no intention ever to write along those abstract lines anymore”.
Plant’s ongoing partnership with Alison Krauss strongly indicates his musical evolution. Unsurprisingly, it’s their work together that he’s most proud of in his post-Zeppelin canon. During his appearance on the BBC radio show Desert Island Discs, the singer named the pair’s 2007 collaboration, ‘Your Long Journey’, one of the eight tracks he’d like to have for company on a desert island. It was the only song from the entirety of his recording career that Plant selected, which shows how highly he rates the composition he describes as “really beautiful”.
Plant also named the song, originally by Doc Watson, one of his career favourites while speaking with The Guardian in 2017. Significantly, it was one of the first tracks Plant recorded with Krauss, whom he first sang with at a Lead Belly tribute concert in Cleveland in 2004, which was instantly magical.
On ‘Your Long Journey’, he commented: “I picked this one over them all, because it’s killer beautiful.” It’s also a track that epitomises his partnership with Krauss, who he “was basically tutored by”. Further, Plant added: “She’s a very precise singer who’s done more duets than you can shake a stick at, and I was thinking: help, I’m a rock singer, no matter what I do. But, of course, I’m not: I’m just a guy that sings songs”.
The track signifies Plant’s stark evolution from rock music into folk and bluegrass territory, where he now prefers to reside. Not only does it suit his voice considerably more than ferocious Led Zeppelin numbers like ‘Stairway to Heaven’ or ‘Whole Lotta Love’, but it’s aligned with his soul.
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