Why Robert Plant wanted Led Zeppelin to compete with Buffalo Springfield
Competition has always been part and parcel of the rock and roll landscape; even the ‘peace and love’ age of the 1960s was marked by various vicious rivalries and inter-band arguments, far from the hippie love-in it is so often presented as.
For a band as trailblazing and original as Led Zeppelin, though, it is difficult to think of any equals to compete with.
Although nowadays, rock outfits attempting to emulate the riffs of Jimmy Page or Robert Plant’s distinct vocal style are as common as muck, Led Zeppelin established a completely original sound back in the late 1960s. Taking its cues from the blues and R&B listening habits of Page and the gang, that sound soon sprawled out in a thousand different directions, each more complex, experimental, and unheard of than the previous. It is no surprise, therefore, that the band almost single-handedly established – or, at the very least, perfected – the early sounds of hard rock.
Still, it was a lonely old life for Zeppelin back in their heyday, or it would have been were it not for the admittedly enviable life of rock and roll excess they were living. After all, when you are in a league of your own it becomes difficult to take notice of what anybody else is doing.
On one hand, not having the luxury of comparing themselves to others might have been the key to the band’s otherworldly original sound. However, stopping and looking around once in a while is essential – just ask Ferris Bueller.
While Page, in particular, seemed content with working with the band in isolation, without the anxiety of what everybody else in the rock landscape was doing, his vocalist and confidant, Robert Plant, wasn’t always the same way inclined. Unlike Page, who had spent the majority of the 1960s as an in-demand session musician, performing with the likes of The Who, The Rolling Stones, and a seemingly endless list of rock and pop heroes, Plant was predominantly a music fan rather than a performer back in the swinging sixties
As a rock devotee, Plant soaked up all the influences of the counterculture and psychedelic age, so it was something of an inevitability that, when Led Zeppelin began to rise through the ranks, the vocalist began comparing his group to his hippie heroes. Although the singer did admit, during a 1990 interview with Rolling Stone, that “really, there was nobody to compete with,” that didn’t stop him from trying.
“It would be nice to think that we could walk alongside Kaleidoscope or Buffalo Springfield for diversity,” Plant continued. Although neither of those two groups ever came close to striking upon the sounds of ‘Achilles Last Stand’ or ‘Kashmir’, for instance, they did establish an incredibly expansive sound back in their day, which is perhaps where Plant’s comparison comes from. Still, he laughed, “I don’t think Jimmy’d agree with that, because I don’t think he thought much of Buffalo Springfield.”
Page’s questionable take on Buffalo Springfield aside, that comparison between the hippie stalwarts and Led Zeppelin goes some way to explaining Plant’s attitude towards the band. They weren’t just looking to create popular rock records; their true inspiration came from the idea of creating a vast, experimental sound that stretched from one end of the rock spectrum to the other – an aim which they certainly achieved across their beloved discography.
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