Music Why Robert Plant fell out of love with heavy metal: “I’m embarrassed”
“There’s nothing worse than a bunch of jaded old farts, and that’s a fact.” – Robert Plant
We can never be certain what our creations will beget in life. When the novelist Jack Kerouac wrote On The Road, he had no idea it would one day inspire Katy Perry’s classic ‘Firework’, and when Ian and Patricia Campbell of Kings Heath, Birmingham, spent decades lovingly raising their three sons, how could they ever have known they would grow up to be UB-fucking-40.
Similarly, Robert Plant might have roared rock towards a heavier new height, but he hated what it became. Led Zeppelin emerged from the smokestacks of Wolverhampton. In this region, literal heavy metal was bountiful. And even that was failing in the mid-1960s. Thus, it became patently apparent to the band that rock ‘n’ roll needed a counterpoint to all the flower power, so they drew from the darkness and mysticism of the blues.
But they were up against it, so they always had to up the ante. “I realised what Led Zeppelin was all about around the end of our first US tour,” Plant once recalled. They had begun as unknown entities, decided to skip the usual British invasion trick of conquering the UK before going overseas, and after a jaunt in Scandinavia, they headed to the States.
“We started off not even on the bill in Denver,” he continues, “And by the time we got to New York we were second to Iron Butterfly, and they didn’t want to go on.” This fearsomeness was also ratified by Vanilla Fudge, who claimed that Led Zep were the only band that could match them. However, this sense of shocking prowess and darkness also resulted in the off-shoot of shock rock and copious leather.
This has led Plant to hate the heavy metal tag, but nevertheless, they have been crowned the forefathers. “It’s hard to call Zep’ metal,” Billy Corgan once ventured, “But they did create different blueprints that are still being used in Riffland. I love this record [Physical Graffiti] because it is so damn dark.”
But that darkness alone became the blueprint when bands realised that there was cash to be made from the satanic panic. So, one day during an interview beneath a fortuitously placed piece of band promotion, Plant pointed to a camp Judas Priest poster and announced: “If I’m responsible for this in any way, then I am really, really embarrassed.”
Plant later added: “Hard rock, heavy metal these days is just saying, ‘Come and buy me. I’m in league with the Devil — but only in this picture because after that I’m going to be quite nice, and one day I’m going to grow up and be the manager of a pop group.’” And Plant is alone in thinking the genre became a “jaded” pantomime of its former glory. In 2015, Jimmy Page even refused to be part of Eddie Trunk’s show That Metal Show owing to the title alone.
As you can see from PLant’s favourite songs below, he’s into heaviness in a spiritual sense much more so than anything thrashy or devilish.
Robert Plant’s favourite songs:
1.‘Love Me’ by The Phantom
2.‘Introduce Yourself’ by Faith No More
3.‘What I’d Say’ by Ray Charles
4.‘Swift as the Wind’ by The Incredible String Band
5.‘Goin’ Down Slow’ by Howlin’ Wolf
6.‘Song to the Siren’ by This Mortal Coil
7.‘Travelling Riverside Blues’ by Robert Johnson
8.‘Lullaby’ by The Cure
9.‘A Big Hunk O’Love’ by Elvis Presley
10.‘Kashmir’ by Led Zeppelin
