The one singer that “intimidated” Robert Plant
Heavy rock and roll isn’t the realm of music best known for virtuosic singers. As Bob Dylan, Johnny Rotten and Liam Gallagher taught us, technical skill isn’t essential. However, lyrical content, passion and originality are the key elements to success. Just before we leave technical skill to Celine Dion and Mariah Carey, one can’t help but point out the unprecedented talent of former Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant.
When Jimmy Page originally decided to start Led Zeppelin, he knew that he wanted to make a band with a lot of range. This meant labelling themselves as a rock band and introducing various elements that separated them from the other bands making music at the time.
“I had a lot of ideas from my days with The Yardbirds. The Yardbirds allowed me to improvise a lot in live performance, and I started building a textbook of ideas that I eventually used in Zeppelin,” said Page, “I wanted Zeppelin to be a marriage of blues, hard rock and acoustic music topped with heavy choruses – a combination that had never been done before. Lots of light and shade in the music.”
Alongside Freddie Mercury, Plant deserves a lofty position on the rock vocalist pyramid. Although he ultimately proved himself to be quite the lyricist, Plant was initially earmarked for his vocal talent. It made him one of the most coveted singers the rock world has ever known.
“I was appearing at this college when [manager Peter Grant] and Jimmy turned up and asked me if I’d like to join the Yardbirds,” Plant said, remembering his first meeting with Page in a 2008 interview with Classic Rock. “I knew the Yardbirds had done a lot of work in America – which to me meant audiences who would want to know what I might have to offer – so, naturally, I was very interested.”
Plant sang Jefferson Airplane’s classic song ‘Somebody To Love’ during this first encounter. Page later recalled the moment: “When I auditioned him and heard him sing, I immediately thought there must be something wrong with him personality-wise or that he had to be impossible to work with because I just could not understand why, after he told me he’d been singing for a few years already, he hadn’t become a big name yet. So I had him down to my place for a little while just to sort of check him out, and we got along great. No problems.”
With a sigh of relief and a checkmark next to both social compatibility and vocal talent, Page invited Plant to join the band that would become Led Zeppelin. Here began one of the finest partnerships in rock history.
With such a powerful stage presence, Plant in his prime wouldn’t have feared a performance play-off against many of his contemporaries, but Prince appeared had him stumped. Plant first spoke publicly about the ‘Purple Rain’ singer during a 1988 conversation with Rolling Stone. The Led Zeppelin frontman noted Prince’s “sheer entertainment and audacity”.
Plant added that “Prince and Page together would be great”.
Two years later, in a TV interview, Plant revealed that Prince intimidated him more than any other performer. “I’m not really intimidated by too many people. But I’m very impressed by people,” he said. “Prince is probably the most impressive single person. Because he is incredibly inventive, but he is using a lot of old… He’s coming from all sorts of areas from the past.”
“He is really, he is pushing them all through a blender,” Plant continued. “So they come out oozing and tripping with honey, sex. It’s not at all sexist, but sexual. I don’t know whether I’d like to work with him because he is so powerful that he’d probably intimidate me a bit – I don’t know.”
Watch Prince cover Led Zeppelin’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’ in 2002 below.
