by Rees, Paul
“Travelling together, you really do see all sides of a person and there isn’t a dark side to Robert at all,” says Blackwell. “Sometimes there’s a bit of bravado, when he puts the mask on, but you know it’ll come off. I’d sit next to him on the plane and we’d be talking about wall colors or carpets. Those were my favorite times with him, when I got to see the real person.
“I met his dad a few times. He was a really down-to-earth Black Country bloke who wore a flat cap. I remember Logan being backstage on a skateboard, crashing into people. Both Shirley and Maureen were lovely, too. I guess we all thought that situation was odd but there were odder things happening. Nothing we were doing seemed to be very real, anyway.”
By the end of this period Plant’s relationship with Shirley Wilson seems to have run its course. He never commented on this, nor on rumors linking him with the Canadian singer and former model Alannah Myles, one of his support acts on the tour. Then promoting their début album, the retro-rock band the Black Crowes also opened for Plant on these American dates. Their drummer, Steve Gorman, remembers Plant taking them to a blues club in Chicago.
“It was just him and us, and we drove down to the Checkerboard, this legendary hole-in-the-wall club on the South Side,” Gorman recounts. “We went in and the house band was cooking. Then the MC got up on the mike, this old black dude. He goes, ‘There’s a very special guest in the house tonight. He came from England and brought the blues back over here. Everyone needs to give him a round of applause. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Led Zeppelin! Stand up, Led!’
“Robert was laughing so hard he could barely get up. He stood up and took a bow. For the rest of the tour we called him Led. He’s very self-deprecating. He clearly loves and respects what Zeppelin did but he’s the first guy to puncture the air around it.”
The tour wound down that December in the U.K. Plant brought his band to Wolverhampton for a more intimate date at the town’s Civic Hall. It was a fine show and he appeared in his element, basking in the audience’s adulation. That night he sang a poignant version of Zeppelin’s “Going to California.” Though no one but he knew it, his next move would return him to the sounds of that song, and also of that time and place.
Around this time I found myself sitting next to him at a James Brown concert at Birmingham’s NEC arena. He looked tanned and relaxed, and was accompanied by a young blonde in a short, figure-hugging dress. I related this encounter to Plant’s old friend, LeFevre. “Oh, her,” he responded, smirking. “She was his niece.”
16
CROSSROADS
My feeling of vulnerability is as acute as my power is.
The Manic Nirvana tour concluded in January 1991 and Plant took off on the longest break he had had since leaving Led Zeppelin. More than two years would pass between now and his next record—and even longer before he toured again. He was occupied with becoming a parent for the fourth time and also in attempting to rediscover his musical place in the world.
That September he celebrated the birth of a son, Jesse Lee Plant. The identity of the child’s mother has been a source of speculation ever since but Plant has never revealed it. However complex their ties might be, Jesse Lee and Plant’s two older children, Carmen and Logan, established a close bond. Plant adored them, being a doting if unconventional father.
Through the span of time he was out of public view the great sea change in music came from America. R.E.M. broke open the mainstream for alternative rock, the critical darlings from Athens, Georgia, releasing two classic albums in the space of eighteen months, Out of Time and Automatic for the People. Grunge was born in the U.S. Northwest. In September 1991 Nirvana, originally from the unremarkable logging town of Aberdeen in Washington State, put out their second album, Nevermind. Within four months it had knocked Michael Jackson’s Dangerous off the top of the Billboard chart and sparked a short, sharp cultural tremor.
Nirvana kicked down the doors for other “Seattle bands” like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains and Screaming Trees. Although these groups espoused a punk rock ethos, they were indebted as much to the bigger beasts of the ’70s, such as Neil Young, Black Sabbath and also Led Zeppelin.
Plant also looked back for inspiration, honing in on this occasion on the records from the ’60s that had captivated him, marking out the path he has followed from then to now. He dug out his old Buffalo Springfield albums and also reabsorbed the music that had swept out from San Francisco during that time, the psych-rock of Moby Grape, Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service.
In the summer of 1993 he collected his band together at his Monmouth home to begin writing his next record. Though the songs came, Plant was restless, dissatisfied, like a man with an itch he could not scratch.
The record was supposed to signal a fresh start. Plant had a new record label, having left Atlantic after more than twenty years with the company and signed to one of its rivals, Mercury Records. He had also brought in a new producer, Chris Hughes, a former drummer with Adam and the Ants who had made his name working with the pop group Tears for Fears.
What Plant did not have yet was a new band and his mood wasn’t improved when recording began. The operation shifted between two studios, RAK in London and Sawmills, located in an idyllic spot in Cornwall on the English south coast. The atmosphere was tense and soon reached breaking point.
“We started at RAK and I felt very comfortable until I began doing first takes,” recalls Blackwell. “Then it all got a bit strange. Chris Hughes was telling me all this stuff that I knew was wrong, all these weird criticisms, but it felt as if it was coming from someone else. At the end of one session I was told not to go in the next day but I did. There was another drummer there, Pete Thompson, who I knew from way back. No one had said anything about it to me.
“We were residential at Sawmills, which kind of amplified the fact that something was brewing. I had to pop back to London for a couple of days, and again, when I returned it turned out there’d been another drummer in doing stuff. There was also another guitarist present, and I was told not to tell Doug Boyle about that.
“The breakup of that band was very messy and nothing was resolved. I was asked to take some time off from the sessions and Robert said he’d call, but never did. The next thing I knew, the album was finished. I went to listen to it and I was on one track. I wasn’t called in for the tour and that was that.”
“Robert’s head had completely changed and it was like we didn’t know each other any more,” continues Boyle. “I played on two tracks and went home. Eventually, Phil Johnstone phoned me and told me that Robert wanted to work with a different guitarist. To be honest it was something of a relief. I didn’t have anything left to give.
“Robert was like a tank. He always needs to have new stimulation and territory to explore, and he won’t do anything unless he’s 100 percent into it. I think it pains him to be like that. I’ve never known someone be so obsessed with music. It’s bursting out of him and he has to vent it, otherwise I’d imagine he’d end up running out of the house screaming. He pushed me as far as I could be taken. It was a joyous experience but at the same time I got broken by it.”
In the end Plant made his sixth solo album, Fate of Nations, with a sprawling cast of musicians. His most recent right-hand man, Phil Johnstone, like Doug Boyle and Chris Blackwell, cowrote a number of the songs that appeared on the record but played on just a handful. Bassist Charlie Jones, now Plant’s son-in-law, was kept on. Among those trooping in and out were the classical violinist Nigel Kennedy and a folk musician, Nigel Eaton, who specialized in a Medieval English stringed instrument, the hurdy gurdy. Four drummers were used and also six different guitarists.
“You have to praise the guy, because he’s always questing to find new ideas and people to work with,” says the album’s producer, Chris Hughes. “He’s not the sort of bloke to sit around waiting for things to happen, and in that sense he’s not just a rock singer but a real artist.
“I
don’t think he’s a born bandleader, though. There’s two types: tyrants like Buddy Rich and James Brown, where you miss half a note and you get ridiculed or fired; and others that are much more concerned about getting the best out of the players and making sure everyone has a good time. He wasn’t either of those. He kind of picked out guys and hoped that they would fit in with what he was doing. He lives his life liking and not liking, favoring and not favoring a huge number of people.”
As usual Plant paid particular to attention to the guitar parts on the record. Doug Boyle’s time being over, he called in the great folk guitarist Richard Thompson, a former member of Fairport Convention, and a younger British whiz kid, Francis Dunnery, whose prog-rock band It Bites had been a support act on his last U.K. tour.
“I never saw Doug Boyle light Robert up,” says Hughes. “He wanted something different, something non-standard. Francis Dunnery, on the other hand, was a very visceral guitarist and I watched him fire Robert quite strongly with his playing.”
“Francis Dunnery was spectacular,” Plant enthused to me. “A mad, crazy, tangential player. Do we really need prog-rock? Well, no, but if ‘Mad’ Frank plays like that . . . He’d say to me, ‘What’s this fucking “playing the blues” thing, Planty?’ I said, ‘Just listen to the Wolf,’ referring to Howlin’ Wolf. I told him, ‘Play how he sings.’ But then, he was also like all the guitarists I’ve played with—a foil.”
The album itself was not quite what Plant had intended, however. His new record label was expectant of a more commercial-sounding album from him, not a great artistic leap forward. Where he had talked in advance of doing an organic-sounding record, Chris Hughes’s forte was for bigger pop productions and he was as meticulous as Plant is impulsive.
Engineer Phill Brown, who had worked on “Stairway to Heaven” with Zeppelin, was brought in at the end of the sessions to mix the tracks. He recalls the process being a fraught one.
“Chris is a great producer but I didn’t like the way he did things,” says Brown. “You might spend ten hours just moving a hi-hat around. Robert would often disappear, announcing that he was going for a walk. He’d be gone for an hour, and then come back and say sarcastically, ‘Are we ready yet?’ I don’t think he liked the direction he was being taken in. I did a week on the record and then left. It wasn’t working for me.”
According to Hughes, “The thing with Robert is quite a lot of the time he didn’t really want to be told, he just wanted it to be an open runway for him to be amazing. I’ve learned over the years that certain artists seek your advice and others want your approval. Robert just wanted to get on with it. He’s quite impatient.”
Fate of Nations gave some insight into Plant’s private life. One of the more wistful tracks on the album, “29 Palms,” was said to be about Alannah Myles, though as always he would not be drawn to admit to as much. On it, he sang of “a fool in love, a crazy situation.” More affecting than this was “I Believe,” a lovely song that addressed the death of his first-born son Karac with heartbreaking candour. “Big fire, on top of the hill, a worthless gesture and last farewell,” Plant intoned as if singing a lullaby. “Tears from your mother, from the pits of her soul. Look at your father, see his blood run cold.” This was the most he had ever given away of himself.
“When you spend time with an artist you see things on a rawer level,” reflects Chris Hughes. “You see it all—the bullishness, but also the fragilities and the frailness. He talked quite a bit about the Wilson sisters. Nothing I can remember specifically, just the fact that they were quite a force.
“The thing with Robert is he’s very, very sociable and charismatic, but he doesn’t operate in the way that most people do. In terms of what he wants to do and who he wants to spend time with, he really does just please himself. He can go wandering off down to the bus stop and meet a girl, and the next thing you know he’ll have brought her back to the studio with him for a cup of tea. His interest in girls was ever present, but that’s OK.”
Although Fate of Nations was meant to court the mainstream, it came into a world where the blockbuster records were louder and more overly angst-ridden. These included Pearl Jam’s second album, Vs, Siamese Dream by Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana’s In Utero, this last record marking the ending of their—and grunge rock’s—brief reign, and doing so with a howl from the abyss.
In the States in particular Plant was pushed out to the fringes, Fate of Nations barely scraping in to the Top 40 there. Even though he put a brave face on this, it was a body blow and one every bit as painful to him as the failure of Shaken ’n’ Stirred had been eight years before.
Plant went back out on tour in April 1993. His stock had declined so sharply that he was opening for the American singer Lenny Kravitz on a run of European dates that summer. Kravitz had cribbed his entire act from Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and others, and was fifteen years Plant’s junior.
The shame was that this touring band was as capable as any he had had as a solo performer. Guitarist Francis Dunnery joined him, alongside bassist Charlie Jones and a young British drummer, Michael Lee, who had grown up idolising John Bonham. The shows were strong and Plant in great voice, although he had a succinct enough explanation for this being the case.
“I sing better than I did because there’s less powders going up me hooter,” he informed Deborah Frost of Spin. “It’s very difficult to give myself wholeheartedly,” he added, “but when I do, as I have to this group of musicians, then I’m vulnerable. My feeling of vulnerability is as acute as my power is.”
Rubbing salt in his wounds was the fact that Jimmy Page had just then had an album in the U.S. Top Ten. Harder still for him to take, Coverdale·Page paired the guitarist with ex-Deep Purple and Whitesnake singer David Coverdale, a kind of preening parody of Plant. Plant was scathing about it.
“Well, that record certainly trumped my samples,” he huffed to me, five years later. “I burbled out all sorts of garbage about it but it seems rather cute looking back.”
Page, who like Plant was also now being managed by Bill Curbishley, was unapologetic, admitting he’d done the record instead of a Zeppelin reunion. Speaking to me at the time, he said: “I was going through a totally frustrating and fruitless period so it was good just to be able to find a singer. I haven’t spoken to Robert about it.
“You’ve got to take into account here that 1991 was a year off for all of us. Jonesy had a couple of arrangements to do but that wasn’t going to take him a full year. I certainly didn’t have anything on and Robert had nothing to do. So really, the whole path was open for the three of us to come together but Robert just didn’t want to do it. After that I just thought, ‘This is just a total waste of time.’ ”
Page’s association with Coverdale was nonetheless short-lived. Plant’s tour rolled on into the States that September, where he’d had to downscale from arenas to theaters. During the course of it, he was approached by MTV with the offer of doing one of its MTV Unplugged shows. The popular franchise, for which artists performed an exclusive acoustic set, had given a career boost to such long-in-the-tooth stars as Paul McCartney, Neil Young, Rod Stewart and Eric Clapton. It seemed to offer Plant just the shot in the arm he needed.
From the off he was of a mind to do something different within the format. When he had been in Paris earlier in the year he had asked the French producer Martin Meissonnier to work up some North African-sounding drones and loops for him, and he was keen to follow up on these. His manager Bill Curbishley, on the other hand, was more intent upon maximising the impact of the proposed show. Sensing the perfect opportunity to bring two of his clients back together, he suggested to Plant that he bring Page on board for it.
The two men met up in Boston that November to discuss the idea, Page flying in to see Plant’s show at the city’s Orpheum Theater. After the gig Plant handed Page the tapes he had received back from Meissonnier. The complexities of their relationship are such that every gesture is open to interpretation, not least by the two of t
hem. In this instance Page read Plant’s act as a test.
“He had these loops and it was, ‘Let’s see if Jimmy can come up with anything. Or is he about to get in the limousine with David Coverdale?’ No, I’m fine with a challenge,” Page told David Fricke of Rolling Stone. “It was interesting getting together with Robert again. It’s apparent that the third [Zeppelin] album, where you have the emphasis on acoustic, was more attractive to him as time went on, rather than the more hardcore elements. Whereas I’d jump off a roof into that—naked.”
Negotiations went on, weeks stretching into months. Plant rounded off the Fate of Nations tour in South America at the beginning of the following year. He came home and sunk into a depression, brooding on the state of his career and putting on weight, as he tended to do when at a low ebb. He seemed inert, unable to decide what to do next. He was still unsure about working again with Page, feeling the ghosts and the guilt stirring.
He went to see his old friend Benji LeFevre and asked his advice. LeFevre told him not to sign anything he could not walk away from.
“I also said I thought he owed it to himself, and to Maureen and to Karac as well, to see if he could resolve any issues within him,” says LeFevre. “Though I was surprised it was even an option. Having seen and heard Pagey playing at a couple of gigs with Robert, it had been terribly disappointing.
“Plus, the whole Zeppelin thing was a textbook on how to perpetuate the myth. They never did any press and then they didn’t get back together again. That’s fucking smart. Because it will never, ever be as good as it was.”
Finally, Plant made up his mind. Just as he had done after Shaken ’n’ Stirred he fell back on his safest bet. In April 1994, six months on from their initial meeting, he and Page joined each other on stage again at a tribute concert for their old blues mentor, Alexis Korner, in the East Midlands spa town of Buxton.
“It was good to get back together being mates,” Page told me. “A lot of water had gone under the bridge.”