The one award Robert Plant wanted nothing to do with
It’s hard to think of someone like Robert Plant having too many regrets throughout his career.
He had climbed the heights that most people would have thought impossible when Led Zeppelin was first being put together, and even when he started making his own solo career, he did a great job at distancing himself from his old band and doing whatever new venture he wanted in the meantime. But even with the legacy that he has built up, he wasn’t willing to turn up for every single pat on the back from the industry.
Because that’s not really what Plant signed up for even in Zeppelin’s prime; the industry wasn’t a place where he wanted to earn trophies, and whenever he worked with Zeppelin, one of the biggest parts of their appeal was the mystique that they built around themselves by staying as far away from the media as possible. The critics didn’t need to know what they got up to in their spare time or the inside stories on their classic songs, and that was just fine as far as Plant was concerned.
He knew that nothing mattered more than being able to express himself how he wanted, but it’s not like he was going to be doing other versions of ‘Ramble On’ and ‘Immigrant Song’ into his old age, either. The worst fate he could think of was becoming a one-trick pony, and since he came dangerously close to becoming a caricature, he made sure that the rest of the world knew that he was not your standard hard rock screamer.
There were far greater avenues to go down, but whenever he released records like Now and Zen, there were bound to be a few people listening to see if there was any faint hint of a tune that sounded like Zeppelin. Even when Plant collaborated with Jimmy Page again in the 1990s, he knew that it was better for him to follow his own muse, which made any nostalgia trips more than a little bit awkward for him.
Playing that one-off Zeppelin reunion in the 2000s did at least remind a few people of the power that they once had, but it wasn’t about them trying to recapture their glory. Plant had no desire to be an old hippy singing the same tunes he heard in his prime, so when he started getting legacy awards for what his band brought to the music world, he wasn’t particularly feeling honoured in the same way the rest of the group was.
To him, he was still about creating in the here and now, and there was no need for him to keep everything rolling, saying, “I was in Milan, promoting the new record. I think it was a fantastic tribute, but [I wanted nothing to do with it]. I would have put my robes on and my crown, my sceptre!” But it was never a case of him purely ignoring such honours out of pure spite, either.
If you’re looking at everything through Plant’s perspective, his not showing up makes all the sense in the world. Half of the people would have gladly given the same teary-eyed speech if they could, but when someone is still currently writing their story, it’s bound to be a little bit awkward if they show up in a room of people who are convinced that their glory days of creating music are a thing of the past.
It might be disheartening to hear, but it’s not like the man was ever ashamed of the music that he worked on with Zeppelin. He simply couldn’t bring himself to play it anymore, and when you look at what everyone from Steve Perry to Gregg Alexander to Joni Mitchell to André 3000 has done since their prime, there’s no shame in admitting that your heart isn’t in one sound for the rest of your life.
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