News The “intimidating” musician Robert Plant wanted Jimmy Page to work with
Led Zeppelin is often remembered for the compositional genius and guitar virtuosity of Jimmy Page, and for good reason. However, the band is distinguished as one of the most comprehensively talented in rock history. John Bonham is frequently regarded as one of the finest drummers of all time, while Robert Plant and John Paul Jones left most of their respective rivals in the dust.
This unusual crowding of talent was a result of Page’s high standards. Following the Yardbirds’ departure, the guitarist sought three new members to rebuild the band, initially under the name New Yardbirds. Fortunately, around this time, Page caught wind of a vocalist from Birmingham who sang for a band called Band of Joy.
“I was appearing at this college when [manager Peter Grant] and Jimmy turned up and asked me if I’d like to join the Yardbirds,” Plant said of his first meeting with Page in a 2008 interview with Classic Rock. “I knew the Yardbirds had done a lot of work in America – which to me meant audiences who would want to know what I might have to offer – so, naturally, I was very interested.”
During this first encounter, the frontman sang Jefferson Airplane’s song ‘Somebody To Love’ to Page. The guitarist later recalled the moment: “When I auditioned him and heard him sing, I immediately thought there must be something wrong with him personality-wise or that he had to be impossible to work with because I just could not understand why, after he told me he’d been singing for a few years already, he hadn’t become a big name yet. So I had him down to my place for a little while just to sort of check him out, and we got along great. No problems.”
As much as Page fell on his feet with Plant, Plant fell on his feet, having been selected by one of his generation’s finest guitarists. The pair made history together as the main songwriting duo of Led Zeppelin throughout the 1980s and, quite frankly, couldn’t have asked for a more befitting partnership.
If Plant were pushed, however, to name one guitarist he could imagine replacing or joining Page on stage, it would be the late American polymath Prince. “I’m not really intimidated by too many people, but I’m very impressed by people,” Plant said in a 1990s TV interview. “Prince is probably the most impressive single person … he’s incredibly inventive, but he’s using a lot of old … he’s coming from all sorts of areas of the past, and he’s really pushing them all through a blender. So they come out oozing and dripping with honey — sex.”
“Prince and Page together would be great,” Plant added, suggesting that a second guitarist in Led Zeppelin may not have spoiled the broth. Although Plant would have loved a chance to collaborate with Prince, he humbly claimed, “I don’t know if I’d like to work with him because he’s so powerful. He’d probably intimidate me a bit.”
Watch Prince cover Led Zeppelin’s ‘Whole Lotta Love’ below.
