In a new interview with Vulture, Led Zeppelin legend, Robert Plant, discusses the finest and most questionable music of his career.
The following is an excerpt from the feature, sub-titled "Most questionable music era":
Says Plant: "I’m not being smug, but everything I go into, I go into with my eyes open. I try things that sometimes depend on whether anybody has any time for what I do after all these years of pummelling the media and sort of nuance-ing my way through it all. I can’t really complain. Because am I thinking about whether the public accepted it? Or am I thinking about whether I accepted it? Well, it has to be how I feel, because there are many other options all of us can take who’ve been around this length of time. We can give up because there’s nothing else to offer. Or we could just write and sit back on our laurels.
"After John (Bonham) passed away and there was no Led Zeppelin, there had to be a way to go. I floundered around a lot because until I was 32, I was in some kind of wild and absurd adventure. I went through all that stuff. I’ll write with other people. It’s a very intimate thing to do. It’s hard for anybody to expose themselves musically. Other people with me, and me with other people. I have a lot of songs under my belt, which I co-wrote with the members of Zeppelin. It was a lot to live up to. I had a lot of people who gave me support and strength around that time, so I suppose the first two albums were driven by great friends.
"Phil Collins especially was a driving force and had positive energy with the first record, Pictures At Eleven. It wasn’t a difficult job to get together with other people, it was just whether or not we could cook it properly. With Phil, it wasn’t so much advice as encouragement and consideration. He was taking no prisoners. He would only allow himself a short amount of time to come to the studio in Wales and make it work. Nobody was hiding behind the performance. Then he came on tour with me and basically said, “Robert, the guy that sat behind you for all those years was my hero.” That was it. He said, “Anything I can do to help you to get back into fighting shape again, I’m here.” That was at the time when “In the Air Tonight” came out. Yet he was still mixing and working with me while kicking off a particularly impressive and successful timeIndeed, Collins somehow made time to play drums on the majority of Pictures at Eleven’s tracks, as well as serve as Plant’s drummer for the subsequent tour. This was after Collins became an international sensation with Face Value and Genesis’s early-’80s output. for himself. He’s a great spirit, a good man.
"By Shaken ‘N’ Stirred, I was so determined to become the opening act for Talking Heads. So I started writing more and more oblique pieces of music — embracing what had become new studio techniques and stuff. I probably lost my way, but then there are so many LPs in my being, so you have to live with it and live by it. On the other side of the coin, I came roaring out of it and made an album like Fate Of Nations with Richard Thompson and Nigel Kennedy. I came back onboard again. I think that was probably where I finally did find my way out of the passing of Led Zeppelin."
Read the full feature at Vulture.com.
CMT Crossroads recently celebrated 20 years of one-of-a-kind concerts with Robert Plant and Alison Krauss. The new episode debuted November 28.
Plant and Krauss played Crossroads in support of Raise The Roof, the 2021 sophomore album from the pair released 14 years after their 2007 debut effort, Raising Sand.
