The beginning of Led Zeppelin began in the mind of Jimmy Page, far before\u00a0Robert Plant\u00a0became involved.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It\u2019s hard to picture the band without that voice soaring above all of their tracks, but when listening to some of their original records, it\u2019s easy to see the band that they were already becoming a few months prior to \u2018The Golden God\u2019 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\u2019t as keen on when the band first started working out their material.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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 \u2018You Shook Me\u2019, it\u2019s 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\u2019 Wolf every now and again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Plant\u2019s voice didn\u2019t 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\u00a0shouldn\u2019t\u00a0<\/em>have done a half-hearted\u00a0Elvis Presley\u00a0impression on \u2018Hot Dog\u2019, it was much better for him to take a chance rather than go back to screaming his brains out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Which is probably why some of the greatest Zeppelin songs seem like they\u2019re coming from the other side of reality. \u2018No Quarter\u2019 and \u2018Stairway to Heaven\u2019 definitely had their roots in typical harmony, but Plant\u2019s vocal prowess brought all of them to a different level. He wasn\u2019t singing the same way that Little Richard or Chuck Berry had done, but that\u2019s probably because he had moved on from that style of singing a long time ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you really think about it,\u00a0the post-Zeppelin era\u00a0didn\u2019t 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\u00a0Unledded.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Because at this point, Plant had practically scrubbed most of the rock and roll out of his DNA,\u00a0saying\u00a0years later, \u201cI\u2019ve 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\u2019ve always done that anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But that doesn\u2019t mean that he couldn\u2019t 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 \u2018Percy\u2019 persona one more time on Celebration Day, <\/em>he still sounds as hungry as he did when the band were finishing up the mixes on In Through the Out Door <\/em>a few decades prior.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s nobody\u2019s fault that Plant doesn\u2019t want to go back to rock and roll anymore, but listening through to what he has done with Alison Krauss in the meantime, it\u2019s not like he has stopped making interesting music. He still feels like he has something to say, and over the years, he\u2019s bound to continue showing different sides of himself that don\u2019t need to rely on being the guy who sang \u2018Dancing Days\u2019 half a lifetime ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n