ROBERT PLANT Not Afraid To Veer Outside Of Rock - “I Don’t Live In That World, And Neither Did LED ZEPPELIN”

September 4, 2014, 9 years ago

By Martin Popoff

feature hard rock classic rock robert plant led zeppelin

ROBERT PLANT Not Afraid To Veer Outside Of Rock - “I Don’t Live In That World, And Neither Did LED ZEPPELIN”

Of many pithy, profound and amusingly quip-ful things Robert Plant said through the press conference this writer was privileged to be part and parcel of, this was the stunner. In it, he was referring directly to P.J. Harvey and Low (read on), but it could also apply to the likes of Alison Krauss and Patty Griffin. And applied to any of those four, the implication would be that their careers and creativities... they can and will get on without Robert.

In another sense, this also applies to Robert’s crack band of “virulent, musically” Brits on the fetching and Morrissey-precious new lullaby and... THE CEASELESS ROAR. And here, Robert very much means that there are no drifters, cadgers, bagmen and yea-sayers in his crew of riggers. One might also reflect and wonder if the “should” part of the above might apply (with veil) to guitarists that might want to play in Led Zeppelin again. I’d include plunkers of the thunder-broom, but even though Jonesy would be up for a Zeppelin swing, we all know that there, in fact, is an artist who has no trouble taking care of himself.

 

 

And why the Morrissey reference? Well, as with much of that guy’s career, Robert has, at least for this record, applied a Britishness to something exotic, deliberate, conceptual; in Robert’s case (and not Morrissey’s) the brief seems to be a complex stew of world music, blues and trance.

“It’s the most prolific and freethinking bunch of guys I’ve worked with,” begins Plant, “Because maybe it’s time that’s done this. Maybe it’s an air of a sense of maturity or experience, travel, other cultures, playing through West Africa with the Tuareg into Morocco, and across, down into Mississippi. Everybody’s on the move, and these guys come from… I would say, the kind of Bristol urban scene with Massive Attack, moving into Jah Wobble and Sinead O’Connor and moving into the Womad Festival. It’s a very fluent and very, I suppose, light-footed assembly of spirits, really. And it just dances through everything. The great thing is, is to pillage and to take the stuff of value, and to turn it and twist it and craft it into something that isn’t expected, I think. Or actually, most importantly, to knock oneself out before you start trying to knock anybody else out.”

As for the writing of this, yes, precious material... “Well, there is no process, really. I carry a book around with me everywhere I go, and a very good pen or a very sharp graphite pencil. And I have a sharp tongue to go with it, and I guess my senses are still pretty strident. And so I listen and hear and catch the kind of repartee that you get around you and all the kind of folly, and you write it all down. With these musicians, with the spaceship, we have this kind of weave of music. And it’s not so much about where the guitar solo comes, it’s about where it doesn’t come. And where you get these pieces of music that are almost a trance section of music, where it gives me a great opportunity to write melody atop of that. So it’s a good place to be, and the difference is that the whole approach is more frivolous now. It’s a lot more easy-going, a lot more fun. And with contemporary recording techniques, you can mess about. Very quickly you can develop structures and also very quickly you can dump ‘em.”

 

 

And glad to hear about the writing. ‘Cos most troubling to this writer about the Plant trajectory lately has been the preponderance of covers, the interpretation of songs that already existed—thanks, but I never need to hear “Morning Dew” or Hey Joe” ever again. Robert had in fact gone so far as to say it’s more difficult writing now than in his youth, so I figured it was time to ask him why...

“Well, I retract that now; I take it all back,” laughs Plant. “Because, what I was writing about when I was 20, is like what you were thinking about when you were 20, and what we write about when we’re in our 40s, is what we’re thinking about... You know, certainly, basically, I think my lyric writing has... I didn’t write lyrics for the previous two records, because I was with Alison Krauss and with Patty Griffin and Buddy Miller, doing different stuff, visiting beautiful songs from the North American songbook, if you like. I have a lot to say, and I think a lot and I write a lot, so I guess I was scared. Or really, I didn’t know how to pick the lock that opened the door that gave me this record. And now our door is open, and everything’s flowing beautifully.”

I also had to ask at what point within the solo catalogue did he find himself opening the creative doors to the almost giddy creativity he is expressing and celebrating here in 2014.

“I think it was by the time I got to 1991,” Robert replies. “Fate Of Nations was an album, a collection, where I was able to deal with various topics, and I wasn’t creating little pastiches, which I had been on maybe Manic Nirvana. I was always moving across. My sensitivities were developing. And I think, 1991 takes us to what? 22 years ago, something like that, 23. How old would I be? 42. So yeah, I guess it was just waking up. And also, if you go back in time, back to Zep, back to whatever it was, some of the songs, from all stages of my time as a writer, have carried far more importance than others, because the music gave me a place to land with something of more intent to put across.”
“About material and the consequences of life,” continues Plant, “as long as I’ve got something to talk about that fits against a pretty chord progression, I shall write songs. And this most recent collection of songs is very personal to me, and it comes from a place that I could never have imagined arriving at, or passing through.”

 

 

And offering more on the gritty Black Country-meets-Womad sound picture captured... “The capture is in the sound of the application, and also the fact that my friends work in very varied musical outfits like Massive Attack, Jah Wobble, Sinead O’Connor. So people are coming from other environments, coming together to bring their gifts, and to make a melange, a little sort of... if you like, yeah, melange—that’s what it is. It’s a masala of musical themes coming from throughout the British contemporary music scene. So it’s a very kind of fertile and virile place to be coming from. And it allows me a really good tapestry and a great sort of canvas to work my side of the deal.”

“They’re all seekers too,” says Robert of his band, a sort of skunk works built to challenge perceptions, a disparate bunch of British free-thinkers, just like Moz’s Boz Boorer and the boys. “I mean, I’m just talking the talk, because I’ve got the... the name is bigger on the tin than theirs. But they all come very creative backgrounds. (Listeners) may be aware of these music forms, or they may, depending upon the audience, may be stuck in some kind of groove that says outside of rock we don’t go. Well, I don’t live in that world, and neither did Led Zeppelin, neither did Jimmy Page, neither did Bert Jansch, neither did Sandy Denny. You know, we just move through the spheres and we gather stuff as we go, and they allow me a really great canvas from which to operate. It gives me a great deal of spirit, which I might’ve lost a long time back.”

Asked about the dream collaboration he has yet to pack into his schedule as music-appropriating ear to the ground in dozens of countries, Robert figures, “Well, I’ll think about that, but to be honest, when people say, ‘Do you want to produce anybody?’ and stuff like that, I’m so... it’s such a kind of trip to be able to do my own stuff. The guys I’m working with are really on fire, and I think that that, you know, you have to go a long way to try and find people who do stuff like that. But I do really, really, really respect the work of PJ Harvey, and also from Duluth, Minnesota, the guys from Low. But they look after themselves. You know, artists should kind of look after themselves. And you know, I think, I was lucky with Alison Krauss to be able to do something—and with Patty Griffin—which was unusual for me, and unusual for them. But I think the way it is now is perfect.”

 

 

But wait. Are there not rumblings that Plant might be working toward a follow-up to the surprise success that was Raising Sand, his traditional collaboration with the aforementioned Alison Krauss?

“Talk is cheap (laughs). Yeah, I mean, listen, this band that I’m in, where was I a week ago? Oh, I was in Osaka in Japan. Where am I today? In the misty mountains of Wales. Where was I a month ago? Three weeks ago in the Czech Republic, before I played in Dresden and Berlin and northern Sweden. So I think Alison... she’s a very good friend of mine, but I think I’ve got a long way to go yet before I go back to Nashville and start knitting a sweater.”
“Well, it’s not an answer to anything, really,” muses Plant surprisingly good-naturedly in closing, asked if the record is not the correct answer to those who might have wanted something more Zeppelin-esque out of the Golden God. “The answer to anything and everything is being prolific and being kind and having a large and benevolent heart, and I think I’m in that kind of company. And I’m always... my spirit is high, and I will write the way I feel, in the company that is the most spirited.”

BraveWords is celebrating the release of Led Zeppelin legend Robert Plant’s new album, lullaby and…The Ceaseless Roar, with a stream below:

 

 

 



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