The Led Zeppelin era Robert Plant thought was corny: “A big band with big riffs”
Everything about rock and roll coolness is a bit subjective. Although anyone can throw on a pair of leather pants and try to strut around like they are God’s gift to frontmen everywhere, there’s a fine line between walking the walk and looking like an absolute fool trying to make the most of their time in the spotlight. Robert Plant may have had his moments where he earned his rock star status, but he had to admit that some of his biggest moments in Led Zeppelin weren’t the best to reminisce upon.
Then again, ‘Percy’ was never going to be considered uncool in the eyes of the public. No one really has the right to declare themselves to be a ‘Golden God’, but by the time Plant had reached the peak of Zeppelin’s success, it was hard to argue with him being one of the best vocalists of all time, especially considering all that he put into tracks like ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and ‘Rock and Roll’.
That kind of swagger hasn’t stopped, either. There may have been a lot of times when his time in the spotlight was a little bit questionable in the 1980s, but ever since working with bluegrass singer Alison Krauss on Raising Sand, Plant has always been the resident hippy looking to put together the best music that he can and not give a damn what anyone else thought about it.
He has grown into more than a simple rock and roll frontman these days, but in the early days of Led Zeppelin, he was still figuring things out. Outside of picking up his chops from people like Janis Joplin, hearing him go from The Band of Joy to blistering hard rock seems like night and day in some places, including the odd moment where he flies completely off the handle.
When someone is pulling that music out of themselves, though, it’s hard for them to be completely stagnant. That kind of belting demands certain movements, and while a lot of Plant’s stage moves have gone down in legend these days, he admitted that it did seem a bit goofy when looking back on his old stage habits.
Despite his love for the classics, Plant felt that what he was doing was a bit too retro to be taken all that seriously, saying, “I didn’t even know what to do with my arms. Now I understand why Joe Cocker did that for a while, because what are you going to do? If you look at all the sort of bits and pieces I used to throw in for my own enjoyment–I mean, it’s a bit corny now, because it’s referring to Eddie Cochran and Elvis–it was the previous era of rock and roll. It was what we feasted on the get riffs, to get organised, to become a big band with big riffs.”
While some of Plant’s posturing does give off the same impression of Presley shaking his ass back in the day, this is the best possible way for him to pay tribute to his hero. Instead of someone gyrating for the hell of it, hearing Plant sing sounds like he’s consciously trying to pull something out of himself as he’s singing, to the point where he seems on the edge of sanity on tracks like ‘Immigrant Song.’
It might seem corny today, but what Presley merely suggested Plant perfected when running through Zeppelin’s classics. Anyone can try to excite an audience through their motions, but ‘The Golden God’ had fully arrived by the time that they had begun work on Led Zeppelin II.
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