Robert Plant

At twenty-three, Robert Plant had everything a musician can dream of.

He was the voice of Led Zeppelin, the most powerful band on the planet, and the very model of the rock god: the long blond hair, the bare chest, that high voice that howled like nobody else's.

He could have spent the rest of his life being a statue of that moment, charging fortunes to relive it. He did exactly the opposite, and that is what makes him bigger today than the legend.

The four

First we have to talk about Led Zeppelin, because without them none of it makes sense.

In 1968 the guitarist Jimmy Page put a band together and recruited Plant, who brought along his friend the drummer, John Bonham. With John Paul Jones on bass, one of the most brutal quartets in history was complete.

They took the blues, plugged it into a power never heard before and practically invented hard rock and a good deal of metal, although Plant always pointed out that almost a third of their music was acoustic, delicate, mystical.

Their fourth album, from 1971, contains "Stairway to Heaven", which he wrote almost in one go in the studio and which became the definitive rock anthem. But Zeppelin were far more than that song: "Whole Lotta Love", "Kashmir", "Immigrant Song", "Black Dog". For a decade they reigned over music, and their shadow still falls across almost everything that came after.

What it cost him

His story is also marked by tragedy, and it has to be told with respect.

In 1975, Plant and his wife suffered a serious car accident in Greece. And in July 1977, while he was on tour in the United States, the worst possible news reached him: his son Karac, aged five, had died of a stomach infection.

He shut himself away in grief for more than a year. One of his most beautiful songs, "All My Love", is for that boy.

In September 1980 John Bonham — his friend since youth, the finest drummer of his generation — died after a night of drinking, at thirty-two. The ones left then made a decision that says a great deal about them: instead of replacing him and carrying on cashing in, they dissolved the band.

Without Bonham there was no Led Zeppelin. Full stop.

The museum he refused to curate

And that is where the best part of his story begins.

With Zeppelin dead, Plant was set for life if he simply played the old hits until his final days. He refused. He did not want to be a nostalgia act or to manufacture a spare Led Zeppelin; he even thought about leaving music to become a teacher.

Instead he built a restless solo career, crossing styles and decades, always looking for new sounds rather than repeating the old ones.

And when the whole world was begging him — and offering astronomical sums — for a definitive reunion, above all after the single triumphant concert in London in 2007, he said no. He preferred to go on making new music rather than become the keeper of a museum, even if that museum paid better than any other.

The proof

The most beautiful proof of that stubbornness came in that very year, 2007.

Instead of the multimillion-pound tour, Plant recorded "Raising Sand" with a bluegrass singer, Alison Krauss: a delicate, acoustic record rooted in folk. It won him the Grammy for album of the year.

The god of the loudest band on Earth took music's biggest prize with a whispered record, made his own way, without exploiting a single note of his past. Nobody expected that from a former Led Zeppelin man, and that was precisely the point.

The one who never stood still

Robert Plant is alive, still recording and touring, and still refusing to be only the man who sings "Stairway to Heaven".

In a collection full of artists devoured by their own legend or comfortably settled into it, he is the one who never stopped moving. The hardest thing a rock legend can do is turn his back on the easiest money in the world — the sold-out reunion tour — and go on inventing things that may well sell far less. Plant did it again and again.

If you put on "Kashmir", or "Going to California", or "Please Read the Letter", you will hear a man who was a god at twenty-three and who, instead of spending his life being his own statue, chose to go on becoming someone new.

He honoured Led Zeppelin in the best possible way: by refusing to embalm it.

Sources

Robert Anthony Plant (West Bromwich, Staffordshire, England, 20 August 1948), singer and lyricist of Led Zeppelin (1968-1980), a band formed with Jimmy Page (guitar), John Paul Jones (bass and keyboards) and John Bonham (drums). Led Zeppelin were decisive in the development of hard rock and heavy metal; their fourth album (1971) includes "Stairway to Heaven", and among their classics are "Whole Lotta Love", "Kashmir", "Immigrant Song" and "Black Dog". In 1975 Plant suffered a serious car accident in Rhodes, Greece. In July 1977, during a tour of the United States, his five-year-old son Karac died of a stomach infection; he dedicated "All My Love" to him. After the death of John Bonham, in September 1980, the remaining members dissolved the band. Plant built an extensive solo career from "Pictures at Eleven" (1982) onwards and consistently refused to turn it into a nostalgia act; he declined repeated offers to reunite Led Zeppelin permanently, even after the one-off concert at the O2 in London in December 2007, with Jason Bonham on drums. In 2007 he recorded "Raising Sand" with Alison Krauss, which won the Grammy for album of the year in 2009. He remains active. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Interpretations of the meaning of his work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Britannica, Wikipedia, robertplant.org and other press coverage.