Robert Plant has long been celebrated as one of rock’s most commanding voices, a figure synonymous with Led Zeppelin’s mythic sweep and thunderous ambition. Yet beneath the golden god exterior lies a lifelong devotee of subtlety and songcraft, a listener drawn as much to hushed confessionals as to stadium-shaking anthems. Among the writers he reveres most sits a man whose power came not from volume, but from quiet precision.
John Prine was the songwriter’s songwriter. Countless artists who have shaped modern music’s trajectory have cited the country-folk singer as a critical influence, including the great Bob Dylan.
Dylan met Prine in Greenwich Village in the heyday of the folk revival and later dubbed his music as “pure Proustian existentialism”. Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant is also a huge Prine fan. Here he names his favourite track by the illustrious singer-songwriter.
Prine didn’t possess Dylan’s mythic sense of his own destiny. He didn’t chase success either, rather, it crept up on him without his knowing. Prine started attending open-mic nights while still working as a mailman in Chicago. Though he wasn’t confident enough to perform himself, he wasn’t afraid to criticise fellow performers, one of whom eventually asked him if he thought he could do any better.
That unassuming quality became central to his appeal. While others framed themselves as torchbearers of a movement, Prine seemed content to simply observe, scribbling down life as he found it. The absence of grand ambition in his demeanour only sharpened the emotional clarity of his songs, allowing listeners to discover profundity in the everyday.
Hesitantly, Prine got to the stage and demonstrated that he could, in fact, do a lot better. In those early days, he was modest, almost to a fault. Recalling his early songs, he said: “Some were so different that I hesitated to sing them for anybody because I thought I hadn’t heard anything like this before. And I thought, ‘Is it because it’s really good, or is it because it’s so awful?’”
For Robert Plant, the answer to that question was obvious. In 2019, the singer inducted Prine into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame via a video message. Paying tribute to Prine, he said: “Your work is extraordinary. It’s a vast enduring treasury, a beacon of light in these ever-weirder times. Sometimes it seems like you’re writing for all of us, which in fact, you probably are. But today, I feel like you wrote this one just for me.”
Plant then went on to name ‘Far From Me’ as “today’s favourite John Prine song for me.” Released on Prine’s 1971 self-titled album, ‘Far From Me’ was written for the first girl who ever broke his heart, an experience he later claimed made a songwriter out of him. “She gave me my ring back and told me that maybe it needed some work done,” he explained during his performance for Sessions At West 54th. “And I believed her.” You can revisit ‘Far From Me’ below.
