“If you don’t like it, f*** off”: The alt-rock album Robert Plant was in love with
The biggest part of any musician’s longevity is about evolving. No one was going to judge an actor like Leonardo DiCaprio if he kept making movies like Titanic every time he was onscreen, and no one was going to cut people some slack when they were on record rather than in the cinema. And while Robert Plant already knew about wanting to branch out during his days with Led Zeppelin, he knew that there were many more interesting things to work with once the band broke up.
Granted, the whole reason for their demise was about being practical. There was no one else who could have realistically filled the shoes of John Bonham. While many people could have easily done a few tunes with Zeppelin, anyone who picked up two sticks would be compared to him or ridiculed mercilessly for the simple crime of not being the exact same person.
Plant didn’t want to be that kind of band, anyway, so the minute Bonzo passed away, ‘Percy’ seemed to die off along with him. ‘The Golden God’ was now interested in doing something new, and as they were already entering a new age of rock and roll, the sounds were already changing thanks to the advent of MTV.
While there had been arthouse music videos that set the world on fire that Plant enjoyed quite a bit, the latter half of the decade seemed inundated with bands who only hoped to match what Zeppelin had done. And while bands like Whitesnake had fine singers, David Coverdale was never going to match up to what Plant could do, even if he was riding in on a riff that was almost a textbook Zeppelin steal like ‘Still of the Night’.
Amid all of the hair bands, though, the alternative scene was on the rise as well. REM were experiencing major fame for the first time with albums like Document, and Pixies would have fluke hits that found their way onto the obscure college radio stations like ‘Here Comes Your Man’ and ‘Where Is My Mind’, but Faith No More were alternative in every sense of the word, with albums that seemed to switch styles two or three times within the span of four songs.
“f you don’t like it, f*** off!!! You can’t spend all your life whimpering away about the ex-wife. The vocal attitude, the hard, heavy garage rap, I like very much.”
Robert Plant
And as far as Plant was concerned, Faith No More was hitting the nail on the head when they released Introduce Yourself, saying, “I listen to this! And if you don’t like it, f*** off!!! You can’t spend all your life whimpering away about the ex-wife. The vocal attitude, the hard, heavy garage rap, I like very much.” But looking at their approach, it wasn’t all that different from Zeppelin’s ingenuity.
The cornerstone behind every Zeppelin record was about creating new lanes, and with each subsequent album like Angel Dust and The Real Thing, Mike Patton would eventually steer the band into even more zany territory, whether that’s flirting with some semblance of a hook on ‘Epic’ or pulling a bait and switch by making a letter-perfect version of the R&B classic ‘Easy’.
Other people may have been perplexed by what they heard, but Plant heard what sounded like the future, whereas everyone else saw a strange melding of genres. Jimmy Page would start having his own fun in bands like The Firm or jamming with The Black Crowes, but this music always came from a place of fun the same way that Houses of the Holy did.
