Why The Beatles “really fucked off” Robert Plant
Given that they brought rock ‘n’ roll to the masses, resoundingly railed against the establishment, and effectively opened the door for his group and many others, you’d be excused for believing that Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant, like many of his peers, was a big fan of The Beatles when they were at their peak.
Famously, the stories of the Liverpudlian quartet and Led Zeppelin are intertwined. After The Beatles kicked the cultural door off its hinges in the 1960s, paving the way for many other game-changing acts and retired from the road to have their most fruitful period in the studio, things slowly fell apart. It culminated in their split in 1970, which, by that point, had been coming for a long time, since at least 1967, the year they produced their psychedelic masterpiece, Sgt. Pepper’s.
Although the Fab Four continued producing music of timeless quality until the very end, during their last chapter from 1968 to 1970, when the drugs, in-fighting and trappings of fame had taken their toll on proceedings, another group toppled them off their perch as the most exciting in rock. Of course, this was Led Zeppelin. By pipping them to number one and breaking their concert attendance and volume records, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham emphatically asserted their dominance.
Despite being connected through the way they pushed rock ‘n’ roll to new heights, their general sonic resistance, and being ostensibly countercultural acts, according to Robert Plant, he was not a fan of The Beatles when they were at their commercial peak. It wasn’t until the hippie West Coast scene had impacted their output that he changed his mind. He told one interviewer that for a long time, The Beatles “really fucked me off” until their chapter of the psychedelic mastery and ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’.
When speaking to Melody Maker in 1970, the young Plant, who had already eclipsed The Beatles with Led Zeppelin, was asked what drew him in about the “Jefferson Airplane/Love scene”. His response started with a comment about the Fab Four: “Well, I must admit that for a long time things like the Beatles had really fucked me off – until somewhere around Strawberry Fields they started to get interesting again.”
Things soon changed for him regarding psychedelia, though, as he explained: “I remember the first time I heard Buffalo Springfield’s ‘Flying on the Ground is Wrong’. I thought: ‘That sounds like nothing at all,’ and then I heard it again and thought: ‘There’s something more to this.’ The lyrics at the time weren’t astounding, but there was something there. Then I got the album, and it was great because it was the kind of music you could hare around to or you could sit down and dig it, and I thought, ‘This is what an audience wants – this is what I want to listen to.'”
He continued: “Then I got the first Moby Grape album, which was a knockout – the guitar-playing and everything was really good, it fitted together so well. It was that spirit that I reacted to, and when I finally got to San Francisco and saw the Youngbloods and the remnants of that 1966 spirit, it was a cross between being in tears and giggling all the time, because I saw that air that I knew I’d see one day, and all it was was a sort of sincerity.”
A sea change was coming for the music he liked, which proved pivotal for his future career. He added: “All that music from the West Coast just went ‘Bang!’ and there was nothing else there after that. I love good blues, but all of a sudden I couldn’t listen to any old blues any more and say it’s OK.”
Listen to ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ below.
Never Miss A Beat
The Far Out Beatles Newsletter
All the latest stories about The Beatles from the independent voice of culture.
Straight to your inbox.