{"id":3162,"date":"2011-08-09T00:37:30","date_gmt":"2011-08-09T07:37:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=3162"},"modified":"2011-08-09T00:37:30","modified_gmt":"2011-08-09T07:37:30","slug":"robert-plant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2011\/08\/robert-plant\/","title":{"rendered":"ROBERT PLANT"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"robert<\/h1>\n

ROBERT PLANT<\/h1>\n

From Nashville to North Africa, his ears are always open<\/strong><\/h2>\n

On Dec. 10, 2007, the mighty Led Zeppelin roared. The group\u2019s first full concert since its breakup in 1980, featuring late drummer John Bonham\u2019s son Jason filling his father\u2019s shoes, was billed as a one-night-only tribute to the late Atlantic Records founder and president Ahmet Ertegun. But the show\u2019s enormous success naturally stirred rumors that the band was preparing to hit the road together to rock the world once more, and promoters were prepared to offer untold riches to make that happen. Guitarist Jimmy Page was open to the idea, as was bass player John Paul Jones and Bonham. But then there was the group\u2019s iconic frontman, Robert Plant.<\/p>\n

Over the last three decades, Plant has amassed a catalog of solo work defined by genre-defying exploration and relentlessly forward thinking\u2014and he was not about to start looking backward just yet. He had found a rich musical vein with 2007\u2019s acoustic-based Alison Krauss collaboration Raising Sand<\/em>, which won five Grammys and helped to redefine him in the public mind. Now the 62-year-old Englishman wanted to follow his experiment in American music to its logical conclusion. So he entered the studio in Nashville with producer and guitarist Buddy Miller, backed by a group that included singer Patty Griffin, guitarist Darrell Scott, bass player Byron House and percussionist Marco Giovino. The result is Band of Joy<\/em> (named for Plant\u2019s pre-Zeppelin group), which draws from country, blues and 1960s psychedelia to create one more new and unexpected chapter in the career of an uncompromising musical adventurer.<\/p>\n

How did you meet Buddy Miller? <\/strong><\/p>\n

My relationship with Buddy developed during the time when I was traveling with Alison Krauss. He\u2019s an expert on the great American songbook. I mean, he\u2019s got 50,000 tunes on his laptop. It\u2019s spectacular, an absolute cavalcade of joy. Since I first saw him many years ago playing with Emmylou Harris in Dublin, Ireland, I always set my sights on trying to work with him. So out of our last album, Raising Sand<\/em>, came a friendship with Buddy, and out of the friendship with Buddy came this album. It\u2019s not so rigorously attached to the more sort of smoky side of American music. There are great moments of psychedelic twist and twirl, and a lot of swirling goes on. It\u2019s much trippier than the previous adventure. I can\u2019t do a review of it, because it\u2019s too subjective, but it\u2019s definitely going to another place and this is not a historical journey. It\u2019s basically a journey of feel and soul.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve always broken genre barriers. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, if you go back to Led Zeppelin, I don\u2019t recall a great deal of continuity between Zeppelin III<\/em> and Physical Graffiti<\/em> and In Through the Out Door<\/em>. We do have to satisfy ourselves as musicians on a creative level, but we still have to carry a punch and a dynamism that is recognizable, and then also change within all that. That\u2019s what I do. I can\u2019t see this simply as a career. This is an amazing journey. And so I\u2019ve got to tap into the root of all joy, which is a great song\u2014whether it\u2019s one that I\u2019ve written or one that I\u2019ve heard that moved me for a period of time. My ears are always open and flapping. I hear so much great stuff. I\u2019m going to be moving through that. I\u2019m going to be moving through those adventures, and I have an able and fantastic company to do that with. That\u2019s the great thing. I could be stuck in some kind of rut that developed so many years ago. The sparkle could have gone.<\/p>\n

Yet some people still think of you only as the singer from Led Zeppelin. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I don\u2019t know. That\u2019s up to them, really. I\u2019ve made 11 records since then and sold maybe 40 or 50 million copies of them. It\u2019s not as if I\u2019m Mick Jagger and I keep going back to the Rolling Stones every time I have a project that doesn\u2019t work. You\u2019ve got to keep moving along. Look at John Paul Jones right now. He\u2019s in a great band, Them Crooked Vultures. I\u2019ve seen them play, and I\u2019ve been so marveling at John\u2019s energy and his own ability to take his gift into another zone. That\u2019s what it\u2019s all about. You can\u2019t stand still. You\u2019ve got to turn it on, and this show that I\u2019m doing right now is electrifying. It\u2019s just got a different brand name.<\/p>\n

What was the original Band of Joy?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was the band that preceded Zep. John Bonham and I traveled the country knocking on doors and saying, \u201cWould you like to hear us play?\u201d and everybody said no. It was really devil-may-care, doesn\u2019t matter, \u201cWe\u2019re going to go with this no matter what.\u201d That\u2019s the way I feel about everything on a creative level. It was appropriate to use that banner for its original principles, which were that this is fantastic, so take it or leave it.<\/p>\n

Do you ever like to revisit musical areas you\u2019ve previously explored?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Last year I was playing in Abu Dhabi with a one-string fiddle player from Guinea. If you go on YouTube you can find that stuff. And there\u2019s some great polyrhythmic stuff I did with some Algerian guys from Paris. I\u2019m always blown away by that North African smoky rhythm and the great scales that are there, just as I was when I wrote \u201cKashmir\u201d with Jimmy [Page] or when we wrote \u201cFriends\u201d or \u201cIn the Light.\u201d They\u2019re all leaning towards that culture and that music. So I haven\u2019t left anything behind. I\u2019m just doing this and I want to stay with this. This whole sphere incorporates rockabilly and it\u2019s all there. It\u2019s 21st century.<\/p>\n

Were you surprised by the Grammys?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah. I mean, who knows where the time goes, as Judy Collins once said. Who knows what on earth is going on? You make a record with a whole bunch of people you never met before, you laugh a lot, somebody gives you some ribs\u2014welcome to the South!\u2014and you get a bunch of Grammys and triple platinum discs and stuff. I was having breakfast with Alison up in Nashville two days ago and we were saying, \u201cWhat was that all about?!\u201d<\/p>\n

Were you tempted to do another album with Alison?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, of course, but Alison\u2019s career for\u00a025 years has been with her band, Union Station, so it\u2019s understandable that she works with them. I might have gone back to my other band, Strange Sensation, if I thought that was the place to go. But having met Buddy and that opening the window to Darrell Scott and Patty Griffin, I couldn\u2019t go back to England. I have to stay here now for the duration.<\/p>\n

What are you listening to lately?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I listen to Willie Nelson and I listen to Robert Johnson. I listen to Band of Horses. I listen to everything. How come Charley Patton was so good back then? He didn\u2019t have a press agent, he didn\u2019t have phone interviews, he didn\u2019t do this, he didn\u2019t do that. He stood on a street corner and let it come out, and he changed the world.<\/p>\n

\u2013Lee Zimmerman<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ROBERT PLANT From Nashville to North Africa, his ears are always open On Dec. 10, 2007, the mighty Led Zeppelin roared. The group\u2019s first full concert since its breakup in 1980, featuring late drummer John Bonham\u2019s son Jason filling his father\u2019s shoes, was billed as a one-night-only tribute to the late Atlantic Records founder and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[970,2313,1062],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3162"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3162"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3164,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3162\/revisions\/3164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}