We all know what happens to old rock stars lucky enough to survive the risks
of their hedonistic existence into middle age. They retreat to their country
piles behind high security gates, venturing out only to pick up awards or to
croak their way through their greatest hits in over-priced concerts at giant
football stadiums.
On his new album, Led Zeppelin’s former vocalist Robert Plant has written a
song about the pitfalls of living on former glories. “My peers may flirt
with cabaret, some fake the rebel yell,” he sings in a line that may well
include a not-so-subtle dig at those sexagenarian rockers Rod Stewart and
Sir Mick Jagger. “Me, I’m moving up to higher ground, I must escape this
hell.”
Plant enjoys many of the trappings of mega-rock stardom, with a large country
home close to the Welsh border and a smart townhouse in a Primrose Hill
square in London. But he’s been seeking the higher ground since Led Zeppelin
broke up in 1980, after the death of drummer John Bonham. “I didn’t want
having been part of that great group to be the only laurels in my whole
life,” he says reasonably. “I was only 32 and I thought f**k! All that
stuff’s happened and it went by in the twinkling of an eye. I had to do
something new and put that behind me.”
That was a quarter of a century ago and he’s been struggling to shed the
burden of his past ever since. He made some solo records in the 1980s that
have not stood the test of time nearly as well as Led Zeppelin’s explosive
catalogue, and in the 1990s he briefly got back together with the band’s
guitarist, Jimmy Page. But now he may finally have achieved some kind of
closure on the past with The Mighty Rearranger, by some way his most
satisfying album since Zep were trampling the competition underfoot.
In their pomp Led Zeppelin were the wildest, loudest and most debauched rock
band in the world. They took more drugs and had more groupies than any of
their rivals — and also sold more albums than any British group before or
since, save the Beatles. At 57, Plant still looks the part. His long hair
and snakeskin boots would seem preposterous on a dentist or an estate agent,
yet his demeanour is defiantly anti-rock star.
We meet in his London home and he’s warm and friendly and chats knowledgably
about the old blues artists whose pictures adorn his walls and about his
more recent passion for world music. Many rock stars pay lip-service to
“getting back to their roots”. Plant has actually done it.
It’s been seven years since we saw him playing stadiums with Page. Since then
he’s been lying low, singing with the pub band Priory of Brion and making
just one record, an enjoyable but unchallenging album of covers.
He’s never regretted his decision to walk away from the big time. “I knew I
had to get back to playing clubs and remembering what that pulse was all
about,” he says. “To say goodbye to the large arenas I played with Jimmy was
a very purposeful move. I just didn’t think there was anything left for me
to project to the back of an ice hockey arena any more.”
Plant describes his new record as “a group of statements from a guy who didn’t
think he had anything left to say”. In the end, he found plenty and the
lyrics range from mature observations on his own past to commentaries on the
post-9/11 world. It’s a record on which all his diverse interests and
influences collide, often with surprising and sometimes glorious results.
Rock and blues riffs are mixed with Arabic and African elements, and he’s
effusive about the new sounds he has found in world music.
He’s been a regular visitor to North Africa since the early 1970s. But two
years ago, he travelled to a festival in the Sahara Desert and the
experience represented some kind of epiphany. “I saw in the desert something
I’d been looking for all my life — unhampered, unimpaired expression without
any of the rewards and trappings or gamesmanship that we associate with the
Western music industry,” he says.
“What we have to go through as musicians here is so affected by ego and
trends. Even if you don’t play the game you are aware of it. But these guys
are singing songs that might be thousands of years old. It’s a world away
from trying to get on the Radio 2 playlist. They’ve got all the craft of the
storyteller and the dream-weaver and it was amazing to me to be part of it.
“Led Zeppelin selling 200 million albums was just chance and ridiculous. But
what I saw and heard out there in the desert was big magic.”
Led Zeppelin were also magic to their fans and Plant offended many of them —
not to mention Jimmy Page — when he failed to turn up in Los Angeles in
February for the presentation of a lifetime achievement award to the band at
the Grammies. Yet Plant chose to remain at home, rehearsing with his new
band, the Strange Sensation. “What can you do? I couldn’t be in two places
at once,” he shrugs.
What he is doing now is more important to him than celebrating the past. It
isn’t that he has disowned Led Zeppelin, he says, just that he prefers to
live in the present. “It was wonderful and I was the golden god,” he says.
“But this veneration of one period of one’s life is pointless. It’s great to
look back and smile. But middle-aged self-congratulation is very dangerous.”
When a once significant artist returns with a strong record after a long
period out of the limelight, it’s inevitable that it will be described as a
“comeback”. But Plant rejects the suggestion. “I don’t think I’m going
forward, backwards or sideways. I’m not back in the ring slugging it out
because I don’t think there is any ring,” he says.
Yet presumably he must be proud of the record, or else why put it out?
“Without being cocky, I know it’s an achievement,” he concedes. “But to put
it out there and have everybody saying, ‘He’s returned to form’ . . . I
really don’t know if I want that. If they say, ‘Look, he’s regained his
crown’, then who had it last? It’s a bit like pass the parcel, isn’t it?”
What is undeniable is that The Mighty Rearranger is a potent
statement by someone who has done it all but still retains both the desire
and energy to come up with something fresh. That’s rare enough to make it
one of the most interesting releases of the year, and if anyone from Franz
Ferdinand, Keane or Snow Patrol is still creating music half as adventurous
as this in 30 years time, we will be lucky indeed.
Plant admits to being curious to see how the album will be received. Not that
he’s going to lose any sleep if the record goes nowhere. “I hope there’s an
audience out there,” he beams happily. “But if there isn’t, I’m going
straight back to the desert.”
The Mighty Rearranger is released by Sanctuary on May 2
