“Rhyming Crap”: The night Robert Plant tore down two classic rock bands
As the voice of Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant revolutionised rock music throughout the late 1960s and ’70s. Matching the ridiculously high standards of Jimmy Page’s guitar virtuosity, John Bonham’s explosive percussion, and John Paul Jones’ rhythmic bass lines was no easy feat, but Plant prospered with pinpoint pitch and due projection.
One can understand why the heavy metal Venn circle often consumes Led Zeppelin, but the band lies on the periphery as progenitors, also encircled by prog rock and clean-cut blues rock. These genre tags make life easier for us writers and musicologists, but as far as most fans are concerned, Led Zeppelin was a beast of its own.
Built out of the four quarters of the greatest musical outfit the rock world had ever seen, it is not unexpected that the band would find themselves not only as a successful group but as one of the true originators of countless different rock sounds. For the most part, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of rock artists who can find some commonalities with the British band.
In their prime, Zeppelin were self-assured but wholly justified in their self-evaluation. This naturally led to some petty rivalries, including those with The Rolling Stones as fellow British rock titans and Yes as competitors for the complexity crown in the prog-rock realm. For the most part, however, Plant and Page have only kind things to say about their peers.
Tragically, Led Zeppelin called it quits in 1980 following Bonham’s untimely death, thus leaving the band’s spirit in the 1970s. Plant and Page persevered in solo careers and various collaborations but never struck the same peaks again. After 1980, these artists were commonly discussed in the past tense, making it seem somewhat strange to imagine Plant headbanging to Nirvana or Queens of the Stone Age.
Perhaps even more surprising is Plant’s love for The Cure. As a gothic post-punk act, the Crawley-born band is a far cry from Led Zeppelin, but Plant has a particularly soft spot for the 1989 song ‘Lullaby’. In 1995, he and Page invited The Cure’s former guitarist Pearl Thompson to join them onstage for a cover of the Disintegration classic.
With Plant’s weakness for emotional, introspective music, one might assume he jumped on the Radiohead bandwagon in the 1990s, but one would be wrong. According to a 2008 report, an anonymous source encountered the Led Zeppelin singer at Camden’s Fifty-Five Bar, where he requested the staff to change the record a couple of times.
The source stated that “Robert was drinking with a woman and didn’t like the choice of tunes playing.” Allegedly, a Radiohead CD blasted through the tavern’s stereo system, and Plant requested that the staff change things up. “What’s this rhyming crap?” he asked rhetorically.
It is unclear which Radiohead album Plant seemed to take issue with, but things only got worse when the staff popped a Red Hot Chili Peppers album on as a peace offering. “The staff were obviously keen to please, so they changed their music,” the source continued. “They put on the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who they thought might be more up his street. But he didn’t like their stuff either and said it was like a ‘nursery rhyme’.”
Ultimately, Plant’s rant betrayed a man somewhat set in his ways. The singer had had his share of Radiohead and Chilis and still didn’t seem to care. It was evident he was having a bad time. He finally requested that the staff play some music from his classic rock era, suggesting Captain Beefheart as a superior option. The American rock legend also used rhyming throughout his oeuvre, but it was ostensibly more tasteful and affecting.
It feels odd for a rock star to take aim at such talented musicians and reduce them to nothing. But it also feels in keeping with the kind of guy Plant is. He is an honest music lover with opinions just ike anyone of us, and we’d doubt that when in your local pub you wouldn’t find yourself espousing some perhaps hurtful thoughts on the latest song played on the jukebox. For the most part, Plant was doing what any of us would, it just so happens that he is the lead singer of Led Zeppelin so somebody noted it down.
Of course, this story is over a decade old. It is likely that Plant had simply had a couple of beers and found Thom Yorke and Anthony Kiedis’ youthful lyrics difficult to stomach in conditions specific to the evening in question. I sincerely hope that the Led Zeppelin singer has come to appreciate the intrepid work in OK Computer and Kid A over the past 15 years.
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