Interviewer: Steven Rosen – Guitar World, July 1986

In team play, where everything clicks, somebody has to call the shots.

FEW SINGERS in rock ‘n’ roll have held as much influence over the stance and style of singing as has Robert Plant. He was the banshee screaming alongside the plaintive wailing of Jimmy Page’s guitar. His post-Zeppelin work had him shining in a new light, a more deliberate and ethereal one. Not what one might expect from the tonsils responsible for the classic moanings on ‘Immigrant Song’, ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and ‘Heartbreaker’.Plant’s second solo album titled Principle Of Moments was the time slot during which this interview took place. His love for Page was obvious by the reverential tones he used in describing the guitarist’s work. A love which he maintains still exists.

Reeling in the Years It’s a very emotional thing to suddenly find that you’re actually confiding ideas which come from absolutely nowhere. It’s a very embarrassing situation initially to open up because a lot of the ideas are tentative. They come out in that space and time and they could be ridiculous. I don’t know if I consciously learned anything from Jimmy. But everything subconsciously. And unconsciously. But it was my intention to try and maintain some intensity on my solo records. Without collecting personnel who were going to sound like clones of Zeppelin and not turning out a record that sounded like ‘Immigrant Song’ and ‘Whole Lotta Love’.

Robbie [Blunt, guitarist on the Plant solo albums] is a delicate player and good foil after playing with Jimmy for so long. But there are idiots who go, “Ah, he sounds just like Jimmy Page.” And I wonder why on earth I bother to do anything when people say things like that. I don’t really think Zeppelin was ever complacent about the material. By the time we got to Houses Of The Holy and in fact, Physical Graffiti, all the way down there was a conscientious air about Jimmy’s work. And Jimmy’s catalystic efforts to get everybody moving one way or the other.

It’s remarkable that we kept it going for as many records as we did. Really, there wasn’t one record that had anything to do with the one before it. And that’s a great credit when there are so many artists who will unconsciously rest on their laurels and say, “This is it, this is the way it must be.” Complacent? No. We probably grew up together and as we grew up things like ‘All My Love’ and ‘Darlene’ and ‘Ozone Baby’ happened. We did the track ‘Wearing And Tearing’ in 1979 but it ended up on Coda. And we wanted to put it out on a different label under the name of a different artist alongside The Damned and The Sex Pistols because it was so vicious and so emphatically fresh. And if you hadn’t known it was us it could have been anybody at all who was young and virile and all the things that we were then not supposed to be.

The first Zeppelin album was pretty vicious. It was people just coming together. In the same way that Pictures At Eleven is a lot smoother and a lot more sophisticated, the qualities of Led Zeppelin I can never be touched, never be matched. Never be equaled and it cannot be anymore. Nevertheless, it was a great gelling of all that talent. It was really just a jam. It was that sort of thing basically. Things like ‘How Many More Times’ and ‘Dazed And Confused’ were really just extensions of how well we actually fitted together. And the crescendos in ‘Babe I’m Gonna Leave You’ were off-the-wall but brought in so that they made sense. It’s a long time ago and I’m never gonna touch that point again. You can’t possibly do that.

Wholly Other Houses Jimmy was the first one to do anything after Zeppelin broke up [the soundtrack to Death Wish II]. He said emphatically that he didn’t want that to be considered a solo album. But nevertheless it had great moments. Jimmy was proud of and pleased with my records. It was very emotional between the two of us – always will be. Jonesy thought I could have done a lot better with the first record. He said, “Well, ah, I thought you could have done something a little bit better than that, old chap.” So I said “Well, thank you.” And yet again I’m just the singer of the songs.

I guess it’s a lot harder for a guitarist, for Jimmy, to say, “This is it, this is the right combination” and go out and do an album. Because he’s already done it once and he lived for it and he was really the master of Led Zeppelin. I was just chief whip. I just kind of brought it all together when people faded here and there. It was really a catalystic situation for me. I was just trying to make everybody gel because as such I’m not a musician. So I can see it from another angle.