The two rock ‘n’ roll singers Robert Plant wanted to be like: “They were setting the world on fire”
It’s impossible for anyone not alive then to understand what the rock ‘n’ roll explosion was truly like. Today, we are blessed with an array of sonics and content provided from all angles, all of the time. But back in the 1950s, when the genre emerged as a faster, more playful version of the blues, people could not comprehend what was unfolding. To us blessed with hindsight and a wealth of knowledge today, Chuck Berry and Elvis Presley might seem a little childish, but for Robert Plant and everyone else like him, they were the salvation they needed from the post-war era.
In those days, technology was only in its infancy. Radio was the primary means of listening to music, with the odd monochrome TV program bringing the stars to life. For figures such as Plant and the rest of his generation who made it big in the 1960s and 1970s, music gave them the escape they needed from their stuffy schooling and family life where self-expression wasn’t even a consolidated topic. Music was a gateway to a world that was more vibrant and liberating than the restrictive environments they were accustomed to. It provided a voice and an outlet for the youth to explore their identities and push against societal norms, setting the stage for the cultural revolutions that would follow.
Most fathers had withdrawn into their jobs after witnessing the horrors of all-out war less than 20 years prior, and the majority of mothers were working menial jobs, and both were too tired and not accustomed to talking to their children about their feelings or ruminations on their place in the world. Naturally, the baby-boomer generation, who were having their eyes and minds opened by the roll-out of infantile technology and the spread of new philosophical ideas, would be rapt by the explosion of rock ‘n’ roll that was happening in the world’s new superpower, America.
Thanks to the likes of superstars such as Presley, Gene Vincent, and Chuck Berry, a youth culture started to evolve, with people now seeing the arts as a means of escaping the humdrum jobs and repetitious lives of their parents. They wanted to shake, rattle and roll, and no one was going to stop them, let alone their elders, who could neither understand nor give their blessing to this new and defiant form of articulation.
For future Led Zeppelin frontman Plant, it was the moment he first heard Presley’s cover of ‘Hound Dog’ on the BBC that opened his eyes. Wanting to know more, he then found ‘Heartbreak Hotel’, and from then on, there was no going back. It was cool, sexy and wild, and a new era was calling his name.
Plant’s father couldn’t hide his disappointment when his son grew his hair out and opted to follow his musical aspirations. However, it was precisely this kind of square attitude that made them kick back and create a more colourful world in their own image, doing away with the maudlin monochrome of Vera Lynn and Bing Crosby. The older generation’s refusal to give anything away and talk about anything of worth created this desire to let it all out in song, dance, and the bedroom.
While Presley was undoubtedly the most world-famous of the rock ‘n’ roll pioneers, others were much more musically and philosophically significant, pushing back against mores in bolder ways than the hip-swinging Mississippian.
Speaking to Dan Rather, Plant revealed that there were two rock ‘n’ roll legends he always aspired to be like”, Little Richard and Bill Haley. The piano-playing former was by far the most puckish of this era’s musicians, known for his intensely sexual themes, with Haley, the man who ratified the genre as a cultural movement when ‘Rock Around the Clock’ was used in the hit film Blackboard Jungle.
Delving deeper, Plant explained there was a “grim determination” to move on from their parent’s generation, despite not understanding the measure of what they had experienced in the war or were dealing with afterwards. Instead, they were more than happy to be led astray by the pompadour-wearing Little Richard and the energy of Bill Haley and The Comets.
He recalled: “We were just going, ‘Hey, let’s go, what’s happening? Wow! there’s Little Richard, Little Richard!’ You know, this guy banging the piano with a pompadour, who was driving us mad, you know, so good. And Bill Haley, as he did these tours, Bill Haley and the Comets, who you’d say would be quite tame, really, by the standards of what followed, they were setting the world on fire. And I looked at them, and I went, ‘That’s what I want, I want to be like that.'”
They might appear pretty lightweight today, but the rock ‘n’ rollers of the 1950s were more important than anybody. They started it all, and when they emerged, there was nothing like it, with no prior context to understand it. It was pure innovation of the kind we will never understand.
