News The rock singer Robert Plant said that was “too good”
Any hard rock singer trying to get the most out of their voice has tried taking a few cues from Robert Plant. After becoming a part of the Band of Joy, Plant’s role as the melodic force behind Led Zeppelin made every stop in their tracks when they heard him, channelling both a gruff bluesy singer and the wild abandon of artists like Janis Joplin. For all the incredible acrobatics he could make with his voice, Plant still thought he lived in the shadow of one promising English vocalist.
Before he had even started playing the blues, Plant was immersed in psychedelic rock. Throughout his time with The Band of Joy, Plant was known for making songs that had the potential to stand alongside other folk ballads of the time, all while Jimmy Page was making ends meet as a session guitarist around the English studio scene.
After making his first steps into rock god teardbirds, Page realised he wanted to take his music beyond the blues. Drafting in session veteran John Paul Jones, Page’s initial vision to have Terry Reid as the frontman was dashed when he heard Plant sing for the first time, finding that perfect marriage between the sweet and commanding sides of the human voice.
Across the first handful of Led Zeppelin albums, Plant would stretch his vocal cords for whatever suited the song, creating a Viking screech on ‘Immigrant Song’ while crying out in pain throughout most of ‘Dazed and Confused’. While working on the main track for what would become ‘Whole Lotta Love’, though, Plant found himself getting in tune with the sounds of Steve Marriott.
Already making waves in The Small Faces, Marriott had become one of the biggest stars in the English blues scene, drawing deep into his soul to pull out massive vocal runs that no one had heard. Although Plant was ready to carve out his path by the time Led Zeppelin got running, he knew that nothing would be able to equal what Marriott had done before.
While Plant would later get compared to Marriott’s throaty howl, he admitted that he could never match that kind of intensity, saying, “I could never be compared to Steve Marriott because he’s too good, unfortunately. He’s got the best white voice, for sheer bravado and balls”. Since he couldn’t work on the same level as Marriott, Plant decided to find his voice in other ways.
Across albums like Physical Graffiti and Houses of the Holy, Plant would stretch his muscles in other areas, working out the sensitive side of his range on songs like ‘The Rain Song’ and finding time to make exotic sounds on tracks like ‘Kashmir’. That would also extend into his solo career, working on various collaborations with Allison Krauss to give his voice a bluegrass flavour.
Even though Plant may have been insecure about his voice being compared with Marriott’s, it also had to do with coming from two different musical perspectives. While Marriott always relied on the blues to keep him rooted back down on Earth, Plant’s mix of rock and roll swagger and ‘Golden God’ figure would become the benchmark of what every rock frontman would aspire to be for decades to come.
