The singer Robert Plant knew was out of everyone’s league: “Better than we were”
The entire rock and roll community owes Robert Plant a huge debt for carving out the blueprint for the frontman.
Mick Jagger and Little Richard had been great suggestions of what a frontman could be like in the public eye, but by the time that Plant came up onstage with his flowing golden locks and massive voice, everyone understood that there was a new musical god at work whenever he sang ‘Immigrant Song’ and ‘Whole Lotta Love’. But even if he was proud to sing anything that Jimmy Page was playing over, he knew that he was far from the greatest vocalist in the world.
If anything, a lot of what Plant was doing was an imitation of what Steve Marriott did, so naturally, every single time he sang. Every single band around at the time had been taking the blues and pushing it to be as hard and as heavy as it could go, and Plant was only one in a long line of people doing the same thing. Only when he did it, he left everyone absolutely stunned at the kind of range that he had.
No one was jumping up those octaves with that much power, and when you look at the bands that sprung up directly afterwards, a lot of them were trying to do the exact same thing. Ozzy Osbourne said that he absolutely loved Zeppelin when he was putting together those first Black Sabbath albums, and when Ritchie Blackmore first had the idea of making a band with Deep Purple, he felt that he didn’t really have a clear vision until he heard what Zeppelin sounded like.
But the next generation wasn’t just focused on being Zeppelin clones. There were plenty more bands that were willing to take chances with their music, and somewhere in between the bluesy thunder of Plant’s voice and the more stratospheric voices in prog rock was Freddie Mercury. Queen were definitely influenced by Zeppelin in some capacity, but Mercury’s voice was something that no one had heard before.
Which is strange because you can hear Mercury’s influences every single time he opened his mouth. He was clearly indebted to everything from heavy metal to show tunes whenever he sang their signature songs, but when you listen to their tunes, no one was ever going to deliver them as he could. Mercury was a natural star every single time he played tunes like ‘Killer Queen’ and ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’, and even if Plant had a few more years on him, he knew that no other singer could touch what Mercury did.
Queen were a cut above everyone else, and Plant could only look on in amazement at what they were doing, saying, “Freddie sang all these songs originally, and he sang them better than we were gonna sing them. He sang them in the correct keys, he sang them with confidence. He sang them really, really well. His personality vocally and his whole projection we can’t capture.” And it was that sense of personality that made Plant a bit more curious when he eventually left Zeppelin.
No two Queen songs needed to sound exactly the same, and since Zeppelin had nowhere to go after John Bonham passed away, Plant could only hope to accomplish what Queen did by working outside his comfort zone. He didn’t need to be ‘Percy’ anymore, and even if everyone was begging him to go back to Zeppelin and make some heavy rock again, that wasn’t going to satisfy him as much as working with Alison Krauss on more rustic rock and roll.
Because that’s the kind of lesson that we should all learn from hearing Mercury sing. He was one of the finest vocalists of his generation, yes, but he was also one of the bravest musicians to ever live. He wasn’t afraid to make something that was absolutely ridiculous and somehow make it work, so why couldn’t Plant try and do the exact same thing once he didn’t have his band behind him?
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Led Zeppelin Newsletter
All the latest stories about Led Zeppelin from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.