The 1970 song Robert Plant called his most important lyric: “My awakening”
Most people didn’t need to listen to every single song Robert Plant was singing to appreciate Led Zeppelin.
Half of their best tunes were about the energy that they created whenever the four of them got in a room together, and judging by how songs like ‘Whole Lotta Love’ or ‘When the Levee Breaks’ sounded, it felt like the band were pummeling the listener over the head with every single song that they made. Plant may have been the great golden god soaring above it all whenever he sang, but he felt that he wanted to be taken a little more seriously for the lyrics that he was writing as well.
Then again, talking about any of Zeppelin’s original lyrics normally opens up the question of them stealing from other artists. It’s no secret that they ended up liberally borrowing from some of their inspirations every single time they made one of their records, and while they became way better at hiding it, it’s not like Plant was going to take credit for writing a tune like ‘Dazed and Confused’ and ‘Babe I’m Gonna Leave You’ when they were clearing borrowing from Jake Holes and Joan Baez.
Led Zeppelin II at least got them off on the right foot again, but throughout their self-titled era, every single one of their records tended to have a few tunes that were either lifted or reworked from other material. ‘The Lemon Song’ was already taking half of its lines from ‘Killing Floor’, ‘Rock and Roll’ had the entire beat from Little Richard’s ‘Keep A-Knockin’ with new lyrics thrown in, and ‘Tangerine’ was a rewrite of a song that Jimmy Page had been working on when he was still in The Yardbirds.
But Plant clearly was onto something when he began writing on Led Zeppelin III. Most fans didn’t really appreciate the album at the time for what it was, but even if it was considered one of the lesser albums in their catalogue, it’s actually one of the most interesting. It can rock when it wants to on songs like ‘Since I’ve Been Loving You’ and ‘Immigrant Song’, but Plant knew that he had found his higher calling when working on tunes like ‘That’s the Way’.
The song wasn’t one of the most complex lyrics of all time, but Plant felt that he needed to write a song like that so that he could grow as a songwriter, saying, “Led Zeppelin III, probably for me, was about picking up different clues. I was so impressed by the coherence and adamance and the power that musicians in the youth culture were able to steer with social commentary in America, so songs like ‘That’s The Way’ were like my awakening. I had to join in some way or another so it wasn’t just about going to Iceland and writing stuff surrounding the big riff of ‘Immigrant Song’.”
And considering how many times that Plant had written songs about fantastical tales, it wasn’t like he was meant to do that forever. Some of the greatest singers in hard rock would eventually do that as well, but whereas Ronnie James Dio was proud to talk about mythological beasts whenever he sang, Plant felt that it was better for him to have an outlet to write about other things on tunes like ‘Ten Years Gone’.
Since he would also be slipping out of the rock and roll world during his solo career, having that kind of experience under his belt also came in handy. He wouldn’t have been able to make the transition to making an album like Raising Sand had he not kicked down the door on ‘That’s the Way’, and he was proud to have had the kind of experience that he did once he went solo.
Because while Zeppelin’s epic tracks about larger topics were fun, Plant didn’t think of them as his only outlet, either. He wanted the opportunity to ream bigger than that, so it only made sense for him to start talking about real feelings in between singing about the horrors of Golem and Middle Earth all the time.
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