The 1966 album that changed Robert Plant’s life for good: “There’s something more to this”
Robert Plant has always been a multi-faceted talent, never content with being placed in a box, which stops him from expressing the full spectrum of his talent.
While with Led Zeppelin for a decade, Plant carved out a new type of rock ‘n’ roll archetype that countless others have tried, with varying levels of success, to replicate. Yet, it was always clear, even back then, that there was much more to him.
Rock ‘n’ roll was his first love, which became an all-encompassing addiction stimulated by icons such as Elvis Presley and Howlin’ Wolf, but his preferences developed as he gained a taste for folk-influenced rock, which has stayed with him ever since.
With Led Zepellin, he would occasionally let fans get a glimpse into that side of himself on songs such as ‘The Battle of Evermore‘ and ‘Going to California’, which showed there was much more to Plant than first meets the eye.
Now, in recent years, since Plant has become an elder statesman in the industry in recent decades, the former Led Zeppelin frontman has leaned back into his love of folk. But don’t let it be twisted, it’s been part of his make-up since the 1960s and not a new dalliance that has come about because he can no longer hit the high notes.
Pre-Led Zeppelin, Plant was in Band of Joy, who didn’t hide the influence of Buffalo Springfield in their work, and even covered ‘For What It’s Worth‘. However, when the opportunity arose to start a new band with Jimmy Page, Plant dropped everything to take flight on the adventure, which became Led Zeppelin, and left those folkie dreams to rest.
A lifetime later, he returned to the Band of Joy moniker for an eponymous album in 2010, tapping back into that musical mind-frame that inspired him as a whipper-snapper.
During an interview with Melody Maker in 1970, Plant revealed that his love of Californian folk-tinged rock had been born out of growing tired of The Beatles. Bored with the status quo of the ’60s, he searched further afield before stumbling upon Buffalo Springfield, which was a life-changing revelation.
Like all of the best things in life, Plant found them to be an acquired taste at first, but the longer he spent with their music, the more he fell in love. One song, in particular, ‘Flying on the Ground is Wrong’, the first song he heard by the group, had a lasting impact on him.
The rock icon recalled to Melody Maker in the same interview: “I remember the first time I heard Buffalo Springfield’s ‘Flying on the Ground is Wrong’. I thought: ‘That sounds like nothing at all,’ and then I heard it again and thought: ‘There’s something more to this.’ The lyrics at the time weren’t astounding, but there was something there.”
After becoming obsessed with ‘Flying on the Ground is Wrong’, Plant rushed out to buy the album, which proved to be life-changing, elaborating, “Then I got the album, and it was great because it was the kind of music you could hare around to or you could sit down and dig it, and I thought, ‘This is what an audience wants – this is what I want to listen to.'”
The song, written by Neil Young, from the legendary band’s debut album, sparked something inside of him and lit a fuse that has been burning bright ever since.
All these years later, particularly when it comes to lyrics, Plant still places Buffalo Springfield on a pedestal that he believes he’s been unable ever to match, telling Vulture in 2022: “I also loved the lyrics and the shuffle of what was going on with early Buffalo Springfield. The thought process was far more coherent and challenging coming out of America at the time. So I suppose I was kind of stuck in this antiquarian approach of sticking a lyric to a riff. Was it cute? Yeah, it was cute. But did it make any sense?”
While he’s harsh on himself, Plant shouldn’t be. The wide smörgåsbord of influences that Plant soaked up gave him a unique approach that mixed everything from Muddy Waters to Buffalo Springfield to JRR Tolkien under one umbrella. Throw John Bonham, Jimmy Page, and John Paul Jones into the mix, and you’ve got a recipe for era-defining greatness.
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