Robert Plant has lived a few lives in his five decades of music-making, and his voice has had just as many reincarnations. As the iconic frontman of Led Zeppelin, he had the wail of a golden god on a mountain-top. Later, he was the cool counterpoint to Alison Krauss's warm intonations. And, at least occasionally on his latest record, lullaby and... the Ceaseless Roar, his voice conveys the sound of a voyager meditating on his many travels.
On lullaby and… the Ceaseless Roar, Plant explores his love of the English countryside, which he often visited with his parents during his childhood. His family was one of the few to have a car in post-war Britain, and they made use of it to drive out to the countryside. After years of touring, recording and otherwise traveling throughout the world, Plant returned to the area in an attempt to recharge himself.
“Despite my sort of wanderlust, which I’m pleased to be a passenger to, I did make a couple of journeys out there somewhere,” says Plant, in a conversation with Soundcheck host John Schaefer. “And bit by bit, it dawned on me that I was having a removal of some kind of cataracts. I just suddenly saw this condition returning to me as I was when I was a child.”
Plant discusses lullaby and… the Ceaseless Roar, the music that has influenced him, and his involvement with his beloved soccer club, the Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Interview Highlights
Robert Plant, on the British and African influences in “Little Maggie”:
I wanted the album to start with this impression of carrying on from [Plant’s project] Band Of Joy. And as the track develops, you get an idea that we mean British business, and African business, as well... A lot of the North and West African music has deep parallels with the Celtic music that ended up on the west coast of Scotland and Ireland.
On singing about Britain’s Western Shore on “A Stolen Kiss”:
It’s a very dramatic and rejunvianting life force there. I go there to top up the ridiculousness that I am, I guess. I do feel it, really. When the sea and the sky meld into the same oily blue colors — somebody comes along and blows a whistle and puts me back in the van. And says, "Okay, you’ve had enough now. Sail to Manhattan."
On hitting the high notes in "Rainbow":
You sing according to the music. You create the music together with other people, and then you intertwine vocal approach and attitude and lyric on top of something that you’ve created. The melody and falsettos don’t come first — you have to put them on something.
I’ve always tried to sing in an appropriate way to suit the tapestry underneath. When I was working with Patti Griffin or Alison Krauss, I had to modify the natural flamboyance of singing as an individual singer. In Zeppelin or whatever, I was the only one ever singing — apart from a few dodgy harmonies coming in from other members of the bands. So to modify is what it’s all about. To be a good singer is to sing in accordance with the mood of the music.
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On his executive role with the English soccer club, the Wolverhampton Wanderers:
I go all the time. I have to go, wherever it is. And I am lifetime vice president of the club. It doesn’t cost me anything. Sometimes I wear a suit and tie and meet dignitaries, but mostly I’m in the stands with all me mates... Maybe football is like being in a band. It’s a similar sort of thing. You talk about it. You have your moments of great elation. It’s crackin’ stuff.