Robert Plant names his “most powerful” song to play live
Former Led Zeppelin frontman, Robert Plant, has written an extensive quantity of music in a variety of genres. Whether it be the swaggering blues rock of his old band’s early years, the more bombastic soundscapes of their later period, or the world music twists in his solo career, the man from the Black Country has constantly moved forward with his art. This attitude has seen him retain significance when so many of his peers have faded into distant memory.
As well as being one of the most consequential musicians of his generation, Plant is also a fascinating commentator on his personal creative history and that of music in general. Fuelled by clear intellect and the authenticity that makes him stand out from the typical rockstar, his thoughts on music are always enlightening.
When speaking to Vulture in 2023, Plant reflected on his long career, discussing the finest and most questionable efforts he has released. Asked to name his “most powerful” song to perform live, he chose a later cut, ‘Embrace Another Fall’ from 2014’s Lullaby and the Ceaseless Roar. Whilst Plant’s choice might have surprised some Led Zeppelin fans, he provided a robust account of why he regards it so highly. He expressed that the personality of his backing band, The Sensational Space Shifters, “flooded the stage” when performing it.
Plant explained: “The most powerful song to perform that I’ve felt, in more recent times, is called ‘Embrace Another Fall,’ from Lullaby and the Ceaseless Roar. The Sensational Space Shifters were a mix of musicians — my brothers indefinitely for the rest of my time. This song and the projection of it into a crowd was a meld of everything I hold close to me musically. Their performances were jaw-dropping and dramatic. The personality of each player flooded the stage, and it was unbounding. Although it was organised with the dramatic and the explosive, it still had a sort of crazy way it would take off and dissolve again and return to a West African riff and rhythm.”
He continued: “All the lyrics are so poignant to me because it’s about my return to the Shire. For all the things that I really want to do, for everything that I’ve tried to think I’m a traveller, I ultimately keep coming back. The Shire draws me back, and sometimes it leaves me in pieces as I take off. The tension and release of ‘Embrace Another Fall’ has been a major moment for me in all my time. It was so difficult to get it there because it was crazy just trying to keep it under control. But there it is.”
Touching on the North African origins of the 2014 song, Plant drew a connection between it and Led Zeppelin’s 1975 effort, ‘Kashmir’. He said: “I’ve always spent time in North Africa. I’ll sit somewhere out of the way in the shade and listen to life go by. I listen to the musicians moving around the cafés. The suburban players who play a sort of inverted cymbal that they bounce on their knees and play with the fretboard facing the onlooker. It’s another way of doing everything.”
The vocalist concluded: “I became more and more engrossed in it. From my adventures in 1971 and 1972, I got Jimmy to come out to southern Morocco to work on ‘Kashmir.’ I brought the whole thing home with ‘Embrace Another Fall’ because I’ve taken elements of everything that I loved and that trip.”
Listen to ‘Embrace Another Fall’ below.
