“Very dubious”: the Robert Plant song Jimmy Page didn’t approve of
When the 1960s gave way to the 1970s, rock and roll largely carried on its course. The music grew heavier and new subcultures emerged, but it was more evolution than revolution. The shift from the 1970s to the 1980s, however, was a different story. Suddenly, many rock stars were experimenting with questionable new directions, and Robert Plant was no exception.
Was there a single legend of rock and roll who didn’t fall victim to the 1980s panic? Something seemed to happen when the decade turned that sent all of the old stars into a complete identity crisis, causing all of them to pivot and pivot hard.
Perhaps it was driven by technology. By the 1980s, things like synths and drum machines were everywhere and advancing quick. Maybe it was that the older generation felt like they needed to get on board and do it quickly if they wanted to keep up.
Or perhaps it was simply boredom – they’d done the classic rock and roll thing for a while, and so it was time for something new. Either way, it seemed that the leaders of the last two decades went through a sudden period of flux, leading to, admittedly, some of their most embarrassing work.
You have Mick Jagger sharing solo stuff like ‘She’s The Boss’, The Clash flailing on Cut The Crap, even David Bowie seemed to lose his way a moment, as after starting strong with Let’s Dance, it descended into Never Let Me Down, which has all the common signs of the time, including the chronic overproduction everyone seemed to fall into.
Robert Plant was a victim, too, as his 1988 album Now and Zen is a weird one. He’d fallen into the same habit they all fall into, which is going too hard on production and collapsing into that cookie-cutter 1980s pop sound. However, Plant was trying something else to tie his old career to this new era as he sampled Led Zeppelin hits in the track ‘Tall Cool One’.
He didn’t just sample one track or one riff, though. Within one song, Plant calls back to five of his band’s old hits, including ‘Whole Lotta Love’, ‘Black Dog’, ‘Dazed and Confused’ and more. For Jimmy Page, his old bandmate who’d agreed to play on this new solo record, it was a confusing move.
“I know that [Page] was very dubious when I started sampling Led Zeppelin on ‘Tall Cool One’,” Plant recalled as the guitarist didn’t hide his feelings in the studio. But the singer stuck to his guns, defending his vision, saying, “’Look, you know, if the Beastie Boys can do it, I guess everybody can do it…'”
Obviously, though, Robert Plant isn’t a member of the Beastie Boys. So while ‘Tall Cool One’ isn’t the worst track of the 1980s, it’s certainly part of the epidemic that seemed to hit all the rock stars during the era, prompting them all to release some truly questionable tunes.
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