“I don’t think it had legs”: The supergroup that Robert Plant said never went anywhere
Not everyone can claim to be the same singer that they were when they first started performing. There are a lot of years of wear and tear that people endure on the road, and sometimes the songs that could have seemed like a walk in the park don’t always come as easily as they used to when people start getting a few grey hairs on their face. Although Robert Plant made one of the smartest decisions anyone could have made by leaving Led Zeppelin in the past, he knew that there was no way that he could sidestep an entire legacy of him being the ‘Golden God’ for a generation of fans.
That said, no one should expect ‘Percy’ to be the same person he was back in the 1970s. The whole point behind the band’s dissolution after John Bonham’s death was for them to reach out for new influences, and while Jimmy Page was content with fine-tuning his guitar prowess, there were pieces that Plant had yet to explore when he started working on his solo albums like Pictures at Eleven.
Then again, there are some experiments that probably should have been left in the vaults after a while. No one was really asking to hear Plant adopt his best David Byrne impression when he reached the 1980s or break out the squelchy synthesisers, but he always knew it was in service to following his muse rather than making anything relating to Zeppelin. But there had to be a few moments where he embraced his roots.
If he was going to return to his old material, though, he would do it on his own terms. The reunion between him and Page during the 1990s was fantastic and left many Zeppelin fans in awe, but hearing bluesier versions of tunes like ‘When the Levee Breaks’ was the best option they could have hoped for. After all, the banshee may no longer have been available, so it was only natural to play a more gritty version of it.
If it worked for resurrecting old Zeppelin tunes on the album Unledded, Walking Into Clarksdale was the real testing grounds for whether Page and Plant would go the distance or not. They already had the wind at their sails working with someone like Steve Albini, but when looking back on the project, Plant felt that the same energy that ‘Percy’ had in his prime didn’t show up as much as it should have.
“We went on to do Walking Into Clarksdale and what we did was very good, but I don’t think it had legs. Yes, it was ‘Page and Plant’, but it was a real stretch without the other members of Led Zep.”
Robert Plant
Though he was proud of getting back into vocal shape, Plant knew the supergroup didn’t have the potential to work in the long term, saying, “We went on to do Walking Into Clarksdale and what we did was very good. We enjoyed success with ‘Most High’, but I don’t think it had legs. Yes, it was ‘Page and Plant’, but it was a real stretch without the other members of Led Zep and we couldn’t get from underneath the weight of that legend.”
And it’s not like Plant is wrong about the other members being absent. It was never going to be the same with Bonham behind the drum kit, but the real tragedy is not having John Paul Jones at any of the meetings. His bass playing and arranging are half of the charm of those old Zeppelin records, so when listening to how dry everything sounds, it would have been nice to have Jonesy back in a production role at the very least.
The potential was there for them to make great music again, given how well Celebration Day ended up years later, but Plant wasn’t looking to stay in that zone forever. He had other plans, and since Raising Sand ended up being another creative wind for him, he seems content to make the kind of music that he would want to hear before pleasing the fans.
