Post by pledm on Nov 22, 2007 7:45:23 GMT -5
Soundtrack to my life: Robert Plant
He's just made a brilliant album with Alison Krauss. He will shake his mane at the Zep reunion. Is there nothing this rock god can't do? He tells Will Hodgkinson who turned him on to wearing sandals
Sunday November 11, 2007
The Observer
When I was a lonely kid
A Thousand Stars, Billy Fury (1960)
Music was a panacea and a mysterious release for me. It was otherworldly, another life outside Middle England in 1960 where it was all about endeavour, learning and making sure that all your vulnerabilities were not too evident so that you didn't end up looking like a sobbing klutz. Does the male of the species pretend he's more than he is, or does he get lost in forlorn, broken-hearted love songs? I like the idea of the lone male willowing away, and Billy Fury was the great British singer for that. He was part of the pop machine, but he slid through it and became something more, and this song hit me hard when I was 12.
When I discovered my social conscience
Masters of War, Bob Dylan (1963)
Something happened when Dylan arrived. I had to grapple with what he was talking about. His music referenced Woody Guthrie, Richard and Mimi Farina, Reverend Gary Davis, Dave Van Ronk and all these great American artists I knew nothing about. He was absorbing the details of America and bringing it out without any reservation at all, and ignited a social conscience that is spectacular. In these Anglo-Saxon lands we could only gawp, because we didn't know about the conditions he was singing about. Dylan was the first one to say: hello, reality. I knew that I had to get rid of the winkle-pickers and get the sandals on quick.
When Led Zeppelin first went to America
If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day, Robert Johnson (1937)
Dylan brought the references to Black American music, and now, looking back, I can see the connections with West Africa and the American South. I was 15 when I went to see the American Folk-Blues Festival where people like Son House and Sonny Boy Williamson played, and they seemed to emerge from the swamps of my imagination. I've since learned where their music and even where terms like gris-gris and hoochie-coochie man come from, but back then it was all so strange and alien that it was totally alluring. When the band first went to America in 1968, all I wanted to do was to go deep into the blues.
When I discovered Morocco
Leilet Hobb (Night of Love), Umm Kulthum (1972)
On holiday in Morocco in 1972, there was no way I could be prepared for what I experienced when I got to Djemaa el-Fna, The Square of the Dead. I had never seen anything like it: so much activity, and everything was a trick, a sleight of hand, a chase for the dihram. But every aspect of life was followed by this voice. Umm Kulthum represents the nobility of Middle Eastern music. In Islam it's sometimes thought that you should only sing of God, but Umm Kulthum sang of love with such eloquence that she was accepted. This song is incredibly beautiful, and once you know the melody you'll hear it everywhere in the Arabic world.
My Latest Discovery
Little Maggie, Roscoe Holcomb (1965)
I've met my match with the American roots musicians I'm working with at the moment. My love for discovering new things is ceaseless, but I have missed white American roots music entirely. I thought it was just guys in the hills singing black people's songs, and I was so wrong. This is a mountain song about a woman who goes off the rails, and he tells a tale, and he's got a way of singing that goes deep; you can hear the experience in his voice. I've been seeing more of John Paul Jones recently, who has been in Nashville, and I've been working with Alison Krauss and T-Bone Burnett, so the doors have been flung wide open.
Strange and possibly true
1. Plant only got the Led Zeppelin job after Terry 'Superlungs' Reid turned it down. Jimmy Page went up to him after a gig and said: 'I'm looking for Robert Plant.' Plant replied: 'So am I.'
2. In February 1970 the band were threatened with legal action by aristocrat Eva Von Zeppelin. 'A couple of shrieking monkeys are not going to use a privileged family name without permission,' she said.
3. Plant's lyrics often allude to The Lord of the Rings and one of his dogs was called Strider .
4. The cliche about guitar shops banning customers playing 'Stairway to Heaven' is based in truth: it's the most purchased sheet music in history.
5. 'I am a golden god!' has been immortalised in the film Almost Famous. Plant is reputed to have said this on a balcony on LA's Continental Hyatt House.
ยท 'Raising Sand' (Decca) is out now.
He's just made a brilliant album with Alison Krauss. He will shake his mane at the Zep reunion. Is there nothing this rock god can't do? He tells Will Hodgkinson who turned him on to wearing sandals
Sunday November 11, 2007
The Observer
When I was a lonely kid
A Thousand Stars, Billy Fury (1960)
Music was a panacea and a mysterious release for me. It was otherworldly, another life outside Middle England in 1960 where it was all about endeavour, learning and making sure that all your vulnerabilities were not too evident so that you didn't end up looking like a sobbing klutz. Does the male of the species pretend he's more than he is, or does he get lost in forlorn, broken-hearted love songs? I like the idea of the lone male willowing away, and Billy Fury was the great British singer for that. He was part of the pop machine, but he slid through it and became something more, and this song hit me hard when I was 12.
When I discovered my social conscience
Masters of War, Bob Dylan (1963)
Something happened when Dylan arrived. I had to grapple with what he was talking about. His music referenced Woody Guthrie, Richard and Mimi Farina, Reverend Gary Davis, Dave Van Ronk and all these great American artists I knew nothing about. He was absorbing the details of America and bringing it out without any reservation at all, and ignited a social conscience that is spectacular. In these Anglo-Saxon lands we could only gawp, because we didn't know about the conditions he was singing about. Dylan was the first one to say: hello, reality. I knew that I had to get rid of the winkle-pickers and get the sandals on quick.
When Led Zeppelin first went to America
If I Had Possession Over Judgement Day, Robert Johnson (1937)
Dylan brought the references to Black American music, and now, looking back, I can see the connections with West Africa and the American South. I was 15 when I went to see the American Folk-Blues Festival where people like Son House and Sonny Boy Williamson played, and they seemed to emerge from the swamps of my imagination. I've since learned where their music and even where terms like gris-gris and hoochie-coochie man come from, but back then it was all so strange and alien that it was totally alluring. When the band first went to America in 1968, all I wanted to do was to go deep into the blues.
When I discovered Morocco
Leilet Hobb (Night of Love), Umm Kulthum (1972)
On holiday in Morocco in 1972, there was no way I could be prepared for what I experienced when I got to Djemaa el-Fna, The Square of the Dead. I had never seen anything like it: so much activity, and everything was a trick, a sleight of hand, a chase for the dihram. But every aspect of life was followed by this voice. Umm Kulthum represents the nobility of Middle Eastern music. In Islam it's sometimes thought that you should only sing of God, but Umm Kulthum sang of love with such eloquence that she was accepted. This song is incredibly beautiful, and once you know the melody you'll hear it everywhere in the Arabic world.
My Latest Discovery
Little Maggie, Roscoe Holcomb (1965)
I've met my match with the American roots musicians I'm working with at the moment. My love for discovering new things is ceaseless, but I have missed white American roots music entirely. I thought it was just guys in the hills singing black people's songs, and I was so wrong. This is a mountain song about a woman who goes off the rails, and he tells a tale, and he's got a way of singing that goes deep; you can hear the experience in his voice. I've been seeing more of John Paul Jones recently, who has been in Nashville, and I've been working with Alison Krauss and T-Bone Burnett, so the doors have been flung wide open.
Strange and possibly true
1. Plant only got the Led Zeppelin job after Terry 'Superlungs' Reid turned it down. Jimmy Page went up to him after a gig and said: 'I'm looking for Robert Plant.' Plant replied: 'So am I.'
2. In February 1970 the band were threatened with legal action by aristocrat Eva Von Zeppelin. 'A couple of shrieking monkeys are not going to use a privileged family name without permission,' she said.
3. Plant's lyrics often allude to The Lord of the Rings and one of his dogs was called Strider .
4. The cliche about guitar shops banning customers playing 'Stairway to Heaven' is based in truth: it's the most purchased sheet music in history.
5. 'I am a golden god!' has been immortalised in the film Almost Famous. Plant is reputed to have said this on a balcony on LA's Continental Hyatt House.
ยท 'Raising Sand' (Decca) is out now.