“You can’t sing”: Robert Plant on the one musician who stood up to him
Any band that goes on for ages is going to have their way of keeping each other in check. That time in the spotlight can go to someone’s head incredibly fast, so there has to be some way to bring everyone back down to Earth whenever their head gets too big to fit through any venue they play in. At the same time, was there anyone who had any issues with the way that Robert Plant was delivering the goods in Led Zeppelin?
Before they even had Plant, Jimmy Page was already putting together a supergroup, but ‘Percy’ could give anyone a run for their money in the vocal department. He had a resumé that leaned more towards hippy psychedelia, but the minute he embraced his inner bluesman and added a touch of Janis Joplin growl, the world got a taste of what every great rock and roll singer should sound like, especially when going note for note with Page on some of their early tunes.
And his penchant for singing wasn’t going to be a fluke, either. Looking at every singer hard rock singer that tries to out-highnote the person next to them, they all could probably credit Plant for starting that race, inadvertently being the kind of model for what a metal singer should look like, even if the man himself was always hesitant to associate himself with that kind of terminology.
But, really, what other qualifier is there other than heavy metal? Plant’s vocals sound like he’s about to pop a blood vessel, Jimmy Page could make his guitar snarl with some of the most sinister riffs of all time, and with John Paul Jones and John Bonham, they created one of the heaviest backbeats that anyone had ever heard at the time. ‘Helter Skelter’ by The Beatles and ‘My Generation’ may have started the ball rolling, but Zeppelin turned it into a style.
“We always had this antagonistic relationship – and I miss that.”
Robert Plant
Despite Plant being one of the best frontmen of all time, the heaviness usually came from how Bonzo was leathering the life out of his drumkit. He was already known to be a wild animal whenever he got behind the kit, but he was usually willing to destroy any percussion instrument he used. And when his band was keeping up their end of the bargain, it didn’t take Bonham long to put them in their place.
According to Plant, Bonzo was one of the only people to ever call him out when he felt that something was wrong with the way he was singing, saying, “We used to fight. It was an honest relationship, where he would say, ‘Look, you can’t sing, but just go out and look good, and I’ll look after everything else behind you.’ We always had this antagonistic relationship – and I miss that. Nobody’s actually giving it back to me like that now. People are either nice and humble to me or completely the opposite.”
If there was one person who could get away with that, Bonham was probably the one. After all, he had known Plant since they had both grown up in Black Country, and while they did have some great moments together, having the ability to take the piss out of each other every once in a while is the reason why so many great bands work.
Despite having some of the best rock tunes ever in their arsenal, the importance behind Led Zeppelin was not everything too seriously throughout their career. They knew the importance of what they did for rock and roll, but when listening to the way that Plant describes his relationship with Bonzo, it seems more like two brothers fighting than anyone genuinely getting their feelings hurt.
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