Devil’s Choice: Robert Plant’s favourite Robert Johnson song
With the sort of golden locks that a lion would be proud of, a voice that could be measured on the Richter scale, and pants so tight you could count how much change was in his pocket, Robert Plant represented the ultimate frontman of the counterculture age. Aside from the iconography and bristling bravura, he also had more musical chops than a butcher named Beethoven to back it up. In fact, even Freddie Mercury admitted that he was in awe of him when the pair collaborated.
But above all that, he also – like the band he heralded – had an air of mysticism and devilry. He might have been the ultimate counterculture frontman, but such a position would not have been possible to begin with if it hadn’t been for the devil man himself, Robert Johnson. It was this mystified bluesman and his cryptic ways that ensured the type of music he dished out would be called the devil’s music. We may have secularised the slander, but rock ‘n’ roll has always been tarred with the brush of Beelzebub.
Nowadays, rock stars are viewed as outlying rebels, and that rebellious spirit has its origins in the hardy folks who pioneered it. The church was always wary of alternative forms of spiritualism being propagated back in the day, and the blues musicians of old, with their Vodou undertones, represented something to keep an eye on, to say the least.
This all came to the fore when hard times hit. The Great Depression impacted everyone, and it also made the sombre tones of a blues player spiritually appealing. Thereafter, a busker’s open guitar case ended up competing for the same kindness of strangers as the pastor’s collection pot. Thus, blues players like Robert Johnson were decreed to be in league with the devil.
If a pastor was saying you could pray your hardships away and Johnson was crooning that your cursed ways were fated and you were best off smoothing them out with a song, then a face-off for an audience was inevitable. Church attendance dwindled while dive joints attracted an alternative crowd. Thus, suddenly, pastors made the matter bipartisan and warned those sitting on the fence of religion and rock ‘n’ roll that Johnson was singing the devil’s music and to drop him a dime would surely lead to damnation.
Led Zeppelin inherited this kudo and used it to their advantage, imbuing their act with a sense of dark drama and mirth. In fact, they didn’t just take a leap from the histrionics of the genre, they pinched and restyled the age-old riffs. One of the songs they borrowed from most heavily was the crooked and creaking Johnson classic, ‘Travelling Riverside Blues’.
Plant not only cited this as his favourite track by the elusive bluesman but also as one of his favourite songs of all time. As it happens, you may even infer that it is quite possibly his favourite song of all time given how consistently it pops up in the various ‘favourite songs’ lists he had compiled over the years.
Back in 1937, Johnson radically sang, “Now you can squeeze my lemon ’til the juice run down my leg.” This sexual motif is one that Led Zeppelin would steal, prompting the Wilson sisters of Heart to flee one of their gigs. Led Zep even recorded a cover of Johnson’s song back in 1969, paying homage to the man who they wouldn’t exist without.
