The beginning of Led Zeppelin began in the mind of Jimmy Page, far before Robert Plant became involved. 

It’s hard to picture the band without that voice soaring above all of their tracks, but when listening to some of their original records, it’s easy to see the band that they were already becoming a few months prior to ‘The Golden God’ joining the group. And while Plant was more than happy to shout his way through every single one of their songs in the early days, there were always genres that he wasn’t as keen on when the band first started working out their material.

If there was one style that united all of them, though, it was the blues. Page had been aching to break out of the bluesy-pop rut that he had been stuck in with The Yardbirds, and when you hear a song like ‘You Shook Me’, it’s much easier to see what he was trying to do. This was the gut-bucket blues that people from the pre-rock and roll days were doing, and Plant had no problem channelling his inner version of Howlin’ Wolf every now and again.

But Plant’s voice didn’t really sound like anyone else at the time, either. There are clear influences from everyone from Janis Joplin to Terry Reid, but when you see where the band eventually were going, it was never about staying exclusive to one genre. They liked the idea of changing on every record, and even if Plant shouldn’t have done a half-hearted Elvis Presley impression on ‘Hot Dog’, it was much better for him to take a chance rather than go back to screaming his brains out.

Which is probably why some of the greatest Zeppelin songs seem like they’re coming from the other side of reality. ‘No Quarter’ and ‘Stairway to Heaven’ definitely had their roots in typical harmony, but Plant’s vocal prowess brought all of them to a different level. He wasn’t singing the same way that Little Richard or Chuck Berry had done, but that’s probably because he had moved on from that style of singing a long time ago.

If you really think about it, the post-Zeppelin era didn’t really see Plant take the conventional route of a former rock and roll god. He was interested in moving outside of his comfort zone, and while there was no shortage of people trying to copy his schtick when they made their classics, he was far more interested in seeing where his muse would take him. Sometimes it would be into dance-y territory, and other times he would be coming back to jam with Page, but it was still rooted in blues before anything else on records like Unledded. 

Because at this point, Plant had practically scrubbed most of the rock and roll out of his DNA, saying years later, “I’ve taken that zone all the way through these sort of transfigurations, if you like. There was no kind of rock area that interested me, so I could just set sail again with something similar to the attitude I had then I guess. Fuck it, just let it go! Just do anything and everything. Mind you, in a way I suppose I’ve always done that anyway.”

But that doesn’t mean that he couldn’t still bring the thunder when he wanted to. The one-off Zeppelin reunions could be hit or miss from time to time, but when you hear Plant trying to recapture that ‘Percy’ persona one more time on Celebration Day, he still sounds as hungry as he did when the band were finishing up the mixes on In Through the Out Door a few decades prior.

It’s nobody’s fault that Plant doesn’t want to go back to rock and roll anymore, but listening through to what he has done with Alison Krauss in the meantime, it’s not like he has stopped making interesting music. He still feels like he has something to say, and over the years, he’s bound to continue showing different sides of himself that don’t need to rely on being the guy who sang ‘Dancing Days’ half a lifetime ago.