The one singer that both Jimmy Page and Robert Plant fell in love with: “Incredibly moving”
It’s impossible to imagine a band having the same chemistry that Robert Plant and Jimmy Page did in Led Zeppelin.
They might not have seen eye-to-eye, but looking at their track record, you can’t really script a better band, especially with John Bonham’s massive drum fills roaring in on every song they made. But for as tight a group as they were back in the day, both Page and Plant knew when they were looking at a musical kindred spirit when they met one out in the wild.
At the same time, it’s not like Zeppelin was exactly an open book when it came to their opinions, either. They would happily talk about their craft every now and again, but half the reason why people loved them was looking at the mystique that they created. None of them were known for giving interviews left and right, and everyone was left to wonder what was going on behind closed doors that made them hit upon these classic tunes whenever they made records like Houses of the Holy.
They were practically an institution all on their own, but Page always knew to keep his ears open for others out in the world. He needed more of a challenge than the traditional pop market, and while his focus always came back to more eclectic acts like Little Feat or Steely Dan, there was a certain world that Joni Mitchell created that hardly anyone has been able to touch ever since.
Whether it was behind a piano or with an acoustic guitar in her hands, Mitchell’s advanced level of harmony and beautiful lyrics was enough to convince Page to want to give her a spot in Zeppelin, saying, “I don’t think there are too many people who are capable of it. Maybe one. Joni Mitchell. That’s the music that I play at home all the time. Court and Spark I love because I’d always hoped that she’d work with a band.”
But, really, how would that work in the context of Zeppelin? Sure, the band have a lot of downtempo tunes with a lot of harmonic detours, but it’s hard to think of Mitchell being the musical complement to Robert Plant on ‘The Battle of Evermore’ or taking over for the ‘Golden God’ whenever he sang tunes like ‘The Rain Song’. But even Plant would have been the first to admit that Mitchell went far beyond what any other artist could do.
‘Going to California’ was already a love letter to her brand of folksy rock and roll, but Plant felt that what Mitchell could do extended far beyond the traditional folk scene in Laurel Canyon, saying, “[She’s] the queen of all that beautiful music that was written around that time for the late ’60s on through. Her catalogue is incredible, and her concerts were really beautiful, incredibly moving.” And when listening to the rest of her catalogue, you can really hear her moving beyond what rock and roll could do.
People like Steely Dan had already been working with jazz textures in their music, but Mitchell felt right at home when she transitioned to making more sophisticated pop music. An album like Hejira may not have been commercial in the traditional sense, but given how much Plant and Page loved her tunes, perhaps that could have been a road that they might have gone down had John Bonham lived to see the rest of the 1980s.
Hell, they were already working on making more advanced rock and roll than ever before, so had they had time to flesh everything out, Mitchell could have certainly found a place on a Zeppelin record. After all, they were one of the few bands that got her seal of approval, so it wasn’t out of the question for her to break out a guitar if she found herself in the same studio with them.
