“Without a doubt”: The gig that made Jimmy Page choose Robert Plant
It’s never easy for artists to find that common ground when they play their first jam sessions. Even if they are some of the seasoned pros of their respective genres, it’s anyone’s guess as to whether the lightning is going to strike the minute that someone plugs in. Although most people were already hesitant about what Jimmy Page was going to do after leaving The Yardbirds, he knew that everything was going to be okay when Robert Plant played one fateful night.
Whatever Zeppelin was going to be, it had to be more exciting than the toothless pop music that The Yardbirds had been up to. Despite starting out as one of the most dangerous blues acts in the country, the fact that Page and Jeff Beck left the fold right as they started playing songs like ‘Ten Little Indians’ was a sign that things were about to go downhill pretty fast.
But Page didn’t even want to be limited to purely blues music, either. He had been playing sessions for years, and his ability to fit into any genre is half the reason why he wanted Zeppelin to have such an eclectic catalogue. Then again, Percy was more than happy to take his voice in different directions as well.
Although Led Zeppelin is a good proof of concept for what the group wanted to be as a blues rock act, Plant was already at his height as a screamer. Despite getting his start in acts like the Band of Joy, hearing him embrace the sounds of everyone from Little Richard to Sleepy John Estes to even a bit of Janis Joplin in his higher register was what separated him from the Roger Daltreys of the world.
When working with the group Obs-Tweedle, Plant was basically fine-tuning his instrument half the time. There was still that guttural wail from his early years, but there were subtle hints of that folksy sound that would become a major part of their sound when working on tracks like ‘Thank You’ and the first half of ‘Stairway to Heaven’.
While Page was impressed, he remembered being slightly sceptical of whether or not to take Plant on, saying, “When I auditioned him and heard him sing, I immediately thought there must be something wrong with him personality-wise or that he had to be impossible to work with, because I just could not understand why, after he told me he’d been singing for a few years already, he hadn’t become a big name yet.”
Still, that hardly stopped Page from changing his mind about working with him, saying, “Robert was fantastic, and having heard him that night and having listened to a demo he had given me, I realised that without a doubt his voice had an exceptional and very distinctive quality.” Little did Page know that he was setting the stage for an artist that was about to become the archetype for what a frontman should be.
Despite running away from his reputation as of late, Plant was every bit the rock and roll ‘Golden God’ that he was hyped up to be, especially when he was able to go from his signature wail to delicate singing on tracks like ‘The Rain Song’. Page already knew that he needed the equivalent of a supergroup for Led Zeppelin, but even though people like Terry Reid were brought into the fold, there was no contest once the true Zeppelin got together.
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