Robert Plant Stated That The Reunion of Led Zeppelin Wouldn’t Satisfy His Need to be Stimulated
Robert Plant has talked about performing Led Zeppelin songs live and the idea of reuniting the band, claiming it wouldn’t satisfy his need to be stimulated.
Following the passing of drummer John Bonham in 1980, the iconic band disbanded. Since then, they have come together several times, most recently in 2007, although only for special performances. However, Plant frequently plays Zeppelin songs during his solo performances.
In a recent interview with The Los Angeles Times, Plant talked about revisiting the songs and one specific performance of ‘Immigrant Song’ that took place in Iceland a few years ago. Plant and Alison Krauss recently recorded a new joint album.
He reflected on his voice, saying that he knew that the big, open-throated falsetto that he was able to concoct in 1968 carried him through until he grew tired of it. Then, the vocal performance’s accentuated personality changed and proceeded in a different direction.
He added, “But as a matter of fact, I was playing in Reykjavík, in Iceland, about three years ago, just before COVID. It was Midsummer Night and there was a festival, and I got my band and I said, ‘OK, let’s do ‘Immigrant Song’.’ They’d never done it before. We just hit it, and bang — there it was. I thought, ‘Oh, I didn’t think I could still do that.’”
When asked whether he would reunite Led Zeppelin to do more of the same, he responded by saying that going back to the font to receive some kind of enormous applause, doesn’t really satisfy his need to be stimulated.
Plant compared decades-long legacy bands to “holding onto a life raft” in his remarks from the previous year.
He said: “Most musicians form a band, then they stay in the band until it’s over – 20 years, 30 years, 50 years, whatever it is – and it starts to look sadly decrepit. It’s like people hanging onto a life raft, or staying in a comfortable place.”
Led Zeppelin’s vocalist spoke candidly about their reputation for rock ‘n’ roll excess earlier this year, calling most of it “incredible exaggeration.”
He said: “I can’t get my head around it now, I’m so far away from [it]. You can read bits and pieces media-wise but it was so far removed from what it was. The best thing to do was imagine that a lot of it was an incredible exaggeration and most importantly we were able to go home and get new perspective and grow up.”
Concerning other Zeppelin news, former bassist John Paul Jones recently recorded the band’s 1971 rendition of ‘When The Levee Breaks’ with the help of 17 musicians from all over the world, including drummer Stephen Perkins of Jane’s Addiction and husband-and-wife team Derek Trucks and Susan Tedeschi of the Tedeschi Trucks Band.
—Silviya.Y
