The “most sensational” singer Robert Plant said could have replaced him in a heartbeat
There are hardly any rock and roll frontmen who have come out since 1970 that haven’t stolen a fair bit from Robert Plant.
Not everyone is going to be belting to the rafters like he could in the golden age of Led Zeppelin, but anyone who ever tried to make a rock and roll song with a screeching lead vocal was always going to be compared to ‘Percy’ even if they had their own thing. Plant practically trademarked that style of singing in a lot of people’s minds ,but he knew that he was far from the greatest in his field, either.
Because throughout the blues scene in the late 1960s, it’s not like Plant was the only one trying to steal a few tricks from the true blues originators. He didn’t have the same grit in his voice to match someone like Howlin’ Wolf, but when you listen to some of Janis Joplin’s best work and then listen to ‘Dazed and Confused’, Plant’s high notes are remarkably similar from a pure tonal perspective.
Although blues may be the original foundation of rock and roll, it’s not like the genre had only one singing style, either. Muddy Waters always had his voice as an extension of his personality whenever he played, but even when looking at Plant’s contemporaries like Cream, Jack Bruce had a range that was borderline operatic compared to everything most rock frontmen were used to at the time.
But when Plant first got the call to jam with Zeppelin, he knew the competition that he was working with. Steve Winwood could have been a worthy inclusion alongside Jimmy Page’s licks, and since the band were in hot water for copying Jeff Beck’s approach on Truth, there’s probably an alternate universe where Rod Stewart was singing ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and Plant was singing on the cover of ‘Ol Man River’.
But since Terry Reid came the closest to joining the band, Plant had no problem saying that he could have gladly backed out and appreciated watching the band succeed with him instead, saying, “He was just the most sensational singer. He was invited to join Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones in this perception of a group, the potential of which could have been phenomenal. And he had got his own career going with Mickie Most at the time.”
And if you know anything about Page’s track record, it’s not like he wanted to go down the rabbit hole of working with Most again. He had already been through trying to do pop numbers with The Yardbirds, and since he wanted this new band to be a more purist look at what blues and rock and roll could be, Reid was going to have to be put on the side in favour of this screecher from the Black Country.
It’s not like Plant didn’t have a small point about Reid’s talent. All of the tunes that he sang himself could have been decent Zeppelin B-side had they had Page playing on them instead, and there are even a few points when his voice goes into the rafters where you start thinking what he could have sounded like over the top of tunes like ‘Whole Lotta Love’ or ‘How Many More Times’.
Then again, changing history like that would have only caused problems in the long run. Plant was the perfect man for the job, and while Reid did have the chops to be in Zeppelin if he wanted to, no one was ever going to have the same kind of chemistry that Page had with ‘The Golden God’ when penning everything from ‘Thank You’ to ‘Stairway to Heaven’.
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