Robert Anthony Plant was born on the 20th August
1948 in the English/Welsh border country of Worcestershire. His home-town was Kidderminster.
He attended grammar school near Birmingham. At an early age, he acquired a love of rock and roll and long hair, the hair being useful for attracting girls.
His parents didn't discourage his passion for rock and roll. His father, a civil engineer, would drive him to the Seven Stars Blues Club in Stourbridge, where
Plant discovered the magic of the Blues.
He became part of a group at the Seven Stars Blues Club,
the Delta Blues Band. When not playing there, Plant
and a guitarist would go round the local
folk clubs playing Bob Dylan's Corinna Corinna.
At sixteen, Plant left home to pursue a career in music.
He joined the Crawling King Snakes.
To expand his music education, he attended any UK music festivals that featured American blues performers. In the mid-1960s, he joined Band of Joy.
The group went through three incarnations and the
final version featured a powerful drummer,
John Bonham.
They were unusual by the fact that not only did they do covers but threw in some of their own material as well.
Plant and Bonham worked together for a
couple of years with the Band of Joy
and released three singles. Then Bonham
left to work with Tim Rose.
In 1966, Robert met Maureen,
an Anglo-Indian woman, at a Georgie Fame concert. They were married on 9th November 1968 (though they are now divorced).
With a wife in tow, Plant had to make some money.
As gigs with the Band of Joy were now few and far between,
he did some road-making. One of these scarce gigs,
however, took place at London's trendy Speakeasy Club
and in the audience was Alexis Korner. He took a shining to
Plant and when the band folded a couple of months later,
they did some gigs together in the Birmingham area.
They started an album that was never finished. One of the tracks, Operator,
came out on an album called Bootleg Him. For a year, they worked on and off but it petered out.
By the time Led Zeppelin were formed in 1968,
Plant had been a singer for five years. The Led Zeppelin
biography and details of the death of his son, Karac,
can be found by clicking here.
After the demise of Led Zeppelin, Plant
pursued a successful solo career. With
keyboardist/songwriter Phil Johnstone,
he co-wrote three solo albums, Now and Zen
(1988), Manic Nirvana (1990) and
Fate of Nations (1993). Other solo albums include
Pictures at Eleven (1982) and The Principle of Moments (1983).
In 2002, Plant formed a new back-up group, Strange Sensation, for a new album, Dreamland. Their second album, Mighty Rearranger, was released in 2005.
- PAGE & PLANT
Robert Plant and Page teamed up
for a one-off project in 1984 produced
by Nugetre (Ahmet Ertegun), and
the Fabulous Brill Brothers. The EP,
The Honeydrippers: Volume One, featured a
band of mystery musicians
including Jeff Beck and Nile Rodgers.
It was released on Plant's Es Paranza
label and though commercially successful Page
revealed the following year that he and Plant
hadn't been on speaking terms since the
fateful day the previous summer
when the guitarist had overdubbed
his part on the Honeydrippers'
unsolicited hit, Sea of Love.
The differences were patched up as on 13 July 1985
Led Zeppelin reunited at the Live Aid
concert at the JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. Page, Plant
and Jones, with drummers Tony Thompson
and Phil Collins (who had actually toured
with Plant on his 1983 The Principle of Moments tour)
standing in for the late John Bonham, and Paul Martinez
(from Plant's touring band) performed a lousy
twenty minute set featuring Rock and Roll, Whole Lotta Love
and Stairway to Heaven. Plant had just done three
gigs on the trot resulting in his voice being shot; Page's
roadie handed him a completely out of tune guitar
on which to play Stairway to Heaven, which didn't help.
Peter Grant, now no longer acting as manager for any of them, summed it up best:
'It was diabolical ... it was absolutely horrendous'.
So bad, in fact, that when Live Aid
was released on a four-set DVD in
late 2004, the group unanimously
disallowed usage of footage from their performance
though Page and Plant
donated all proceedings from their Unledded
DVD to the Live Aid charity, and Jones donated a portion of the profits from his US tour with the Mutual Admiration Society toward the charity as well.
In 1986, Page, Plant and Jones
gathered near Peter Gabriel's home at Bath,
England for rehearsals with Thompson
with a view to play again as a group. Thompson
had a car accident so one of Plant's
roadies played drums. For whatever reason (and each
band member has different views) the idea
of reforming quickly fizzled out.
However, Zeppelin did reunite again in
1988 for Atlantic Records' 40th Anniversary concert
for only their second public performance after
Bonham's death. They performed a 31-minute
set, with Jason Bonham (sitting in for his
father, John) joining the remaining three.
The three original members also played with Jason
at Carmen Plant's (Robert's daughter)
21st birthday party, and at Jason's wedding.
1990 saw Plant and Page
play a brief set together at the Knebworth music festival,
which included a rarity from Coda, Wearing and Tearing.
Then it happened. Page and Plant, without Jones,
reunited in 1994 for an MTV Unplugged
performance (dubbed Unledded) which
eventually led to a world tour with a
Middle Eastern orchestra, and an album entitled
No Quarter. 'Page and Plant are Led Zeppelin', John Paul Jones observed in 1998, 'in everything but name'. Why they did it without him has never been satisfactorily explained. It seemed unfair and just plain wrong, and
neither Page or Plant came out of it looking great.
Led Zeppelin's strength was that all
members played a precise and integral part
in the mechanics of the band, and to strip it of
one member meant it just wasn't the same.
Nevertheless, the tour was deemed a success
if success can be only measured by bums on seats.
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