In 2011 Rolling Stone placed Robert Plant at number one on its list of best lead singers of all time. Pretty impressive stuff. He has been making music since 1965 and has influenced many a singer today. Singers from Rush’s Geddy Lee to Heart’s Ann Wilson to Jack White have all been quoted to count Plant as one of their influences as a singer and performer. Robert Plant’s latest album, Lullaby and…the Ceaseless Roar will be out online and in stores on September 8th. His tenth solo album features his backing band, The Sensational Space Shifters. In this second part of an interview we had with him he talks about his beloved Wolverhampton Wanderers, his relationship with blues music and if there are any musicians out there he’d like to collaborate with.
Q: I just wonder if you realize how lucky you are. You are an artist that gets to evolve and you’ve got this integrity on every album. You seem to challenge not only yourself but the listeners as well. Whether it’s in Nashville or what you are doing now, which is great. Do you take it for granted or do you realize how lucky you are to have the ability to pull that off?
Robert Plant: Well, you’re very flattering. My whole deal, like every other artist…don’t let any artist tell you they are doing it for the public. If you play soccer, you play soccer for yourself. You become part of a team, but you want to become a good player. If you’re a singer or a songwriter you got to maintain self-esteem and continue to develop. And that’s what I’ve tried to do with my life as a musician. I am very lucky because it flows well for me. The two records before this have both been pretty successful. They were embraced by large sways of the public outside of the rock world and that was great. That was an achievement really. I was able to kick out and work with Alison Krauss and work with Patty Griffin, two amazing singers. This record really gives me the opportunity to write new material with a new and very prolific, virile group of guys musically, of course. That allows me to express myself and go where I want to go. That has to be the primary driving force behind the whole deal.
Q: To soccer, one quick question. Do the Wanderers have a chance at promotion this year?
Robert Plant: Oh, undoubtedly, yeah. It started on Saturday and it’s very exciting. The great thing is I’ve been sitting beside the same guy for years and he’s got a small bladder infection so every time he goes out to the bathroom during the match we always score a goal. I keep buying him drinks so he’ll keep moving out and we’ll keep scoring goals.
Q: With every album you’ve put out there has been a million and one different influences. The new album, Lullaby and…the Ceaseless Roar, is no different. Is there any genre of music you are not a fan of?
Robert Plant: What I do is I sort of pillage, not in the hotel rooms with unidentified members of the public so much, but musically. I’m drawn to the same scales, musical scales, that exist in Africa and Arabic music that slightly end up in the Mississippi Delta. The music of West Africa particularly. There’s something quite mournful about a lot the scales that draws me in. It has an effect on me. It encourages me to write. So I don’t think I’ll be hopping on a plane to Beijing and recording with some guys out there. This is what music in Britain is all about. I think there are a lot of people around who are doing a lot of different stuff and these combinations of style in music are not unusual over here so much.
Q: What about collaborations with different artists? Because you are Robert Plant, you could work with anybody that you want. Is there anybody that you haven’t worked with that you want to?
Robert Plant: Well, I’ll think about that. To be honest, when people say, “Do you want produce anybody” it’s such a kind of trip to be able to do my own stuff and the guys I’m working with are really on fire. I’ve gone a long way to try to find people who do that, but I do really, really, really respect the work of PJ Harvey and also from Duluth, Minnesota the guys from Low. They look after themselves. Artists should kind of look after themselves. I was lucky with Alison Krauss and Patty Griffin to be able to do something which was unusual for me and unusual for them. I think the way it is now is perfect.
Q: You just mentioned that you have been drawn for a while to African music, Western African music in particular, and it has this kind of kinship to the blues, which is another music that has been a lifetime passion of yours. I’d like you to go a little further into the similarities between these two musics because it doesn’t seem tacked on when you add African rhythms to blues. It just feels like a natural fit. How do you explain that musically?
Robert Plant: I’ve got no idea. That’s a bad answer to a good question. The British and Americans were transporting Africans across to the New World and they brought with them their music. For example, the Africans that had been taken from Sierra Leone, the west coast of Africa, were shipped to the Georgia Sea Islands where they could grow rice because that was their inherent job as farmers. They brought with them their own music which is called Gullah music and it is slightly different to the blues. During the American Civil War they were also left to their own devices for long periods of time so they kept their own traditions and their own language. When I was playing in Mali and in Southern Morocco I hear so much stuff. I was talking to a guy who is quite a famous musician in Mali and quite popular in Canada and in the United States from a group called Tinariwen who said that when he was working on the docks in Algiers he thought that Western music was basically the Bee Gees. He didn’t really know that that there was anything else going on because that was all that he heard on the radio networks that were playing Western music. Then when he heard John Lee Hooker he went “Oh, wait a minute, that is what we do”. So the awareness is quite something and switching it over that kind of mirror of music across the whole Atlantic is quite something. Just like Irish music and Scottish music and French music has made their way into North America and ended up in the hills, up the Blue Ridge mountains and up and down the Smokey Ridge mountains in Tennessee and up with you guys. It’s quite something really. It’s beautiful. Obviously they are going to end up in North America because that’s where the whole drive of populous went to.
Q: On this new album I see there is a Lead Belly and a traditional cover which reminds me of the early days. Zeppelin I had Willie Dixon and a traditional. You faced criticism initially for using the blues. I wonder if you feel if you have a better understanding or entryway into the blues now that you’re well into your career?
Robert Plant: I’ve stopped shouting at it for a kick off. I’ve listened to Robert Jones and I hear him singing and hear his lyrics and they come straight from Kokomo Arnold. The storyteller has got to be able, especially after 45 years of telling a story. I’ve made my way through the genre but I don’t lean as heavy on it in its original or quasi-original form. I mutate it and that’s my game. I’m a thief.
Q: Listening to the album one gets the feeling that you’ve integrated into this new music almost every style you have touched over the years and it’s not so much a path of separate entities, but it’s a whole that makes sense. I was wondering if part of that can be explained by the fact that you know some of the musicians that you have collaborated with in the early 2000s and you’ve toured with them for two years so I suppose that chemistry allows you some freedom.
Robert Plant: Yes, that’s pretty much the case. But at the same time they’re all seekers too. I’m just talking the talk because I’ve got the name that is bigger on the tin than theirs. But they all come from very creative backgrounds. They may be aware of these music forms or depending upon the audience may be stuck in some kind of groove that says outside of rock we don’t go. Well, I don’t live in that world. Neither did Led Zeppelin. Neither did Jimmy Page. Neither Bert Jansch. We just want to move through the spheres and gather stuff as we go. They allow me a really great canvas in which to operate. It gives me a great deal of spirit which I might have lost a long time back.
Q: On songs like “Turn it Up” and “Somebody There” fans of Led Zeppelin can taste something that they really like. I was wondering if this album is not the best answer you can give to people who’d like you to regroup Led Zeppelin again?
Robert Plant: It’s not an answer to anything really. The answer to anything and everything is really to be kind and having a large and benevolent heart. I think I’m in that kind of company. My spirit is high and I will write the way I feel in the company that is the most spirited.
Q: One thing that struck me is that the album has a very lush and romantic dreamy tone to it. I’m wondering if working with women like Patty and Alison maybe inspired you to explore your feminine side or maybe you’re trying to make the ultimate make out record?
Robert Plant: (laughs) I’m always accused of having a very pronounced feminine side. It doesn’t do me any harm. I don’t think too much is going to change in my attitude between me and the opposite sex. I’m very happy to be a normal guy having a great time. Artistically I love relationships and friendships. I’m not very good at keeping them. I guess what I did was I spent a lot of time traveling around using music as my compass and it has taken me to these various places with various people. I write a celebration and a reflection of the journey along the way. Basically that is what you get when you hear my songs. It’s what I feel. Down to the people I’ve met. The situations that have passed through me since I last wrote my own songs going back ten years.
Q: I was really knocked out by the production work on the album. I think it is the first time since your very early days, since your first solo record back to the early 80s back to Pictures at Eleven, I think it is the first time you’ve been the lone producer on an album and I’m wondering what was that experience like? Was it arduous or was it effortless?
Robert Plant: Let me go back and think about that. I shared production with Buddy Miller on Band of Joy and T Bone Burnett produced the one before that. No, No, Mighty Rearranger I produced that. Anyways, yes, the thing is I like to share the blame with somebody, but I got to the point here now when I came back from the States and came back to Britain I reunited with my friends and added a couple of guys I really did have a pretty keen conception of what I was trying to do. I wanted to create trance music. I love the whole concept of the hypnotic aspects of music coming out of North Africa. So I wanted to put that into a kind of contemporary music setting. Despite the fact that I am a mature artist I want to lean on stuff that really moves me so I guess I just wanted to hold the reins. Everybody’s contribution was strong I didn’t have to kick anybody up the butt to get anything going. This is no criticism about anything. We’re pretty much conversing and pretty much a unit as far as pace and overcooking the songs. We’re all kind of united on the way we want things to sound. I guess somebody’s gotta have the last word.
Q: What is the inspiration behind the song “Rainbow”?
Robert Plant: It seems like it’s a pretty cute song talking about what I would do to make somebody feel good. I will travel and I will arrive and I will make the sun come out of all the fears. It’s probably the most straightforward lyric on the whole record.
