The one genre Robert Plant believes had the last true rock stars
It’s hard to think of any modern rock act that hasn’t taken at least a few cues from what Robert Plant did with Led Zeppelin.
While Plant would be the first to say that he was never the architect of the band, his ‘Golden God’ status has put him in the company of only a few other frontmen in the history of the genre. John Lennon is up there, and Elvis Presley might be the gold standard for what everyone aspired to be, but Plant felt that a lot of people weren’t getting the picture after Zeppelin bowed out.
The band could have kept going on for years had John Bonham not passed away, but when looking at Plant’s solo career, it was as if he was trying to scrub every piece of rock and roll from his DNA. He would always be proud of the work that he did with his old band, but every single artist should be able to evolve, and you could see him slowly trying to rediscover new pieces of himself whenever he worked with Alison Krauss or brought out the Band of Joy whenever he went out on tour.
Then again, it’s not like Plant had much to be proud of when looking at the bands that followed Zeppelin. No member of Zeppelin ever wanted to be associated with the term ‘heavy metal’, but when looking at all the bands they influenced, every shrieking metal frontman would be lying if they said that they didn’t have a few Zeppelin songs up their sleeve whenever they started putting together their first tunes.
It had worked for a while, but by the time records like Now and Zen were coming out, the biggest names in rock and roll weren’t exactly the most respectable musicians in the world. Everyone from Bon Jovi to Poison were practically carbon copies of what Zeppelin were trying to do but worse, but when the grunge wave arrived, Plant finally understood that there was someone willing to push the envelope for the genre again.
The first punk movement had helped give Zeppelin a run for their money back in the day but when Kurt Cobain first started performing, every single hard rock act was almost rendered obsolete. No one from the Sunset Strip was considered cool anymore, but as far as Plant could tell, hearing the bands from Seattle was the last time that he felt that rock and roll seemed to have a major effect on the world.
That’s not to say that other great bands didn’t come afterwards, but Plant felt that the grunge movement was an example of some of the last rock icons, saying, “I think rock is gone now. It’s just a few blue-collar folks that are still buying the last sort of apologists for rock and roll. Being the opposite of a rock star and still being a kid with a checkered shirt and unwashed hair. It was like the same thing that we did in Zep.”
But even if someone like Cobain fit that description to a tee, it wasn’t like he was aching to be a rock and roll star like Plant had become. He loved to play down his ego, and when listening to the traditional tunes that Zeppelin were pumping out, Cobain was more likely to scream out in pain and lash out at the more misogynistic lyrics that could turn up in Zeppelin songs rather than praise everything that they did.
And seeing as though most of the modern rock acts since the 2000s have been worshipping the gods that have come before, it’s not like Plant was that off the mark calling grunge one of the last pieces of rock and roll history. Because when you think about it, all that those retro acts are doing is celebrating history, and it’s up to the new school to either build on what they did or take the genre in a completely different direction.
