Just say no to nostalgia, says Robert Plant on new album
Peter Howell TORONTO STAR. Toronto Star [Toronto, Ont] 26 May 1993
"Life is a big tambourine," sings rocker Robert Plant in a song on Fate Of Nations, his new album on sale tomorrow.
"The more that you shake it, the better it seems."
Consider it the personal life motto for the witty and urbane former Led Zeppelin singer - and remember that a tambourine swings in two directions.
So it's hardly surprising to hear the 44-year-old Plant on the one hand criticizing middle-aged rock stars who rehash past glories, while on the other offering soothing words of support for his former partner Jimmy Page, who just happens to be reliving Led Zep in a big way.
Still hoping for an official Led Zep reunion, instead of the tantalizing one-off shows like 1985's Live Aid gig? After drummer John Bonham died in 1980, the band quietly broke up, and despite guitarist Page's desire to relive the hard-rock thunder of the premier 1970s stadium touring act, Plant still wants none of it.
"We meet divided/We had our day," Plant sings in new tune "Memory Song", and he agrees it is a succinct way to describe his resistance to the return of Led Zep. "I just see a lot of people around me who have taken the easy way out," Plant says from a video recording studio somewhere in England.
"Some people call it 'legendary status' but you see all of these bands that re-form staggering around the world, selling gross T- shirts, followed by a troupe of accountants and sycophants. And sometimes I think to myself, 'Well, boys, I think it would be better to do 'Stand By Your Man' in a truck stop, really.' " That's a long way of saying "no way" to Zeppelin, and it would seem to also point the finger of shame at Page's new Coverdale-Page album collaboration with Plant soundalike David Coverdale, formerly of the Zep-adoring band Whitesnake. The album sounds like a lost Zeppelin record, and classic rock radio is in a feeding frenzy for it.
"Well, I don't know," Plant says, trying to dodge the bullet. "I want Jimmy to do whatever he can to have a groove - it's his career. He's a fantastic guitar player. Whatever he wants to do, he should do and enjoy it. . . On his record, his playing sounds great."
Okay, but what does Plant really think?
"It's quite a quizzical situation, really," he replies. "Having worked with Jimmy for so long, it makes me wonder whether or not he could have tried a little bit harder (to sound like Led Zeppelin) or a little bit less hard."
And while Plant's album will be competing with Coverdale-Page for the affections of Zepheads, he'll also soon be competing with himself. Another Zeppelin boxed set is on its way, using the rest of the tracks that weren't included in the monster-selling first set released in 1990.
There's a bonus unreleased song called "Baby Come On Home", a bluesy number that was originally intended for the band's eponymous debut in 1969, but which was left off the album. How does Plant feel about it surfacing now?
"I guess if it sounds better, that's okay," he says. "But the track itself was found in a skid outside a recording studio, when the recording studio was sold. Somebody threw out all the tapes, and there were tapes by The Who in there, too.
"That's where it came from, it's from that period, but it's no 'Dazed And Confused'. " Plant doesn't mind revisiting his Zeppelin past - in fact, he recently recorded an acoustic B-side of the Zep anthem "Whole Lotta Love," a song he's also performing in concert - but his new music takes him even further back, to his pre-Zeppelin days.
Fate Of Nations, which Plant describes as "my most dignified record," was born of his desire to explore favorite artists of the mid-'60s, including his own Band Of Joy group with Bonham and such contemporaries as folk singer Tim Hardin and psychedelic rock outfits Moby Grape and Jefferson Airplane.
"I'm trying to create some kind of ambiguous lyrical thread throughout this sort of more hippy-fied, eastern/north African- influenced music," Plant explains - in a manner of speaking.
"My intention is to become more Celt, more Moroccan and more 'baby-baby' as time goes on."
That last bit about the baby explains why the late Tim Hardin's folk chestnut "If I Was A Carpenter" is covered by Plant on Fate Of Nations.
He's just become a new dad again with the arrival of a baby son, and "this is the vibe I'm coming from," he says.
"You know, I know a lot of things now, but that doesn't mean I don't feel the need to be gentle and loving and to give and receive affection. A song like 'Carpenter' is the kind of a song that shows humility. It's a beautiful song, written by a man who wrote so many beautiful songs."
So has Plant, for that matter, and one of his most interesting projects at the moment is a TV special for broadcast later this year that will dramatically illustrate the inspiration for his song lyrics. It's a world tour that will show viewers exactly where such Led Zep songs as "Kashmir" and "Achilles' Last Stand" came from.
He'll also be touring himself, with a Toronto appearance likely in October or November.
"Hey yeah, it will be great," Plant says, in his jaunty style. "I come to America about Oct. 1 for a fall tour and go right the way through, stand on my head, get married in Wisconsin, buy a '72 Riviera boattail (car) and then implode."
Edited June 9, 2013 by kenog Led Zep forum
emphasis mine obviously - what are they on? Also Jesse Lee was born in 1991 and afaik Robert and Shirley Wilson split as a romantic couple soon after their son’s birth. I mean 29 Palms (To Alanah Myles) is right there on the album - let alone Calling to You and Memory Song (Hello Hello) to Jimmy. So yep innuendo about how the boy keeps swinging and all this fluff about trad family values. Ever thus for the rockblokes
