Robert Plant (Led Zeppelin)

you have been motorist several times always Claude nobs was part of the adventure what memories do you keep out of it two people who were associated very fondly and deeply with both me as a solo performer Led Zeppelin I think to some degree and definitely Claude that's Daniel advisor and Jacqueline adavi ohm and the Daniel lives do you know him nope oh my goodness well he worked with Claude he's a champion skier really spectacular guy but he also worked for a while in London for Atlantic Records so it came from the kind of this environment of jazz into England and then was associated quite a lot with arm it I mean my whole link with everything my the sort of common denominator of all things really with spirit and just joy has always been through arm it's my associations last time I saw arm it and Claude was actually here ready yeah in one of your last concerts in sing at a tribute to our meter deacon Claude contacted me and said that there was going to be a night of tribute and it was very funny because it was very humorous because Kid Rock came with an entourage which included a helmet and also Stevie Nicks and the dreadful the two of them did a Led Zeppelin duet and I mean can you imagine them singing in harmony together it was so funny and of course Claude and it we're going yeah this is great well I I guess it was great for the cameras or what I was it was very funny and I had spend a good pleasant evening or two with claudin and our meet at that time the tribute was to arm it for I guess the encouragement and the interlinking between Claude when he went over to New York and 65 have you read his book the big book that he wrote five huge things that you know he talks a lot about it - about his first appearing and oh yeah it was a very interesting and brave brave no I mean being he was a huge catalyst Claude and a great encourage er and not a great singer you know but he was like in the thick of the whole thing all the time and the fact that he did actually he made his way into that scene in New York and and I think with Armit and his brother necessary necessary running the jazz side of Atlantic it was a perfect marriage and really whatever else Claude did the as far as working with other labels and other sparkling entities I don't know too much about all I know is the stuff that involved me either being here or arm its involvement with him and the whole sort of interesting tea dance between jazz musicians and rock and roll musicians which was quite something you know that there's a kind of very interesting social phenomena between jazz and rock and it's it's a little bit like you know classical musicians looking at us and going we now currently have a guy who plays in the vortex jazz scene in London the sort of the end or the beginning of the new post Bebop he's our drummer and he's such a snob it's very funny so we for a Led Zeppelin or myself to collide with all these other musicians the interplay and the chemistry was very funny and I've always looked upon it as being quite comical myself and also beautiful you know musically well Charles Lloyd for instance whom here whom he brought is the first jazz musician you probably knew Charles Lloyd Wright this actually was a really trying to mix and combining rock and jazz and bringing it together at that time is early psychedelic ears like Don Cherry and people like that yeah it was it was really good and you know later in America in 1968 we were working a lot for on the Bill Graham scene so we would be playing with Woody Herman or we'd be in San Francisco playing on the same bill as Rahsaan Roland Kirk we free Kings you know it was like Millar's which was absolutely spectacular so the idea of this actually taken off or being encouraged in Montreux by Claude with his diligence and he's capacity as a from the clerical side of things apart from the musical overview he was a great entrepreneur and so for that reason he was able to seduce and he held he was probably the center of the fulcrum between these two cultures of the very what I would have said pretty conservative society here and and these guys wandering in with their tenor saxophones and sort of the John Coltrane School of Drama you know it's great very good but with Claude we mean we didn't really our relationship with Claude was strong but we weren't part of the Jazz Festival you know we I didn't actually become an artist in the Jazz Festival until after the end of Led Zepplin you know but nonetheless we still we worked with Claude three times here we were drawn here and it's right to say that with that commune Dan the road on the route to Sheol or whatever it is and there was a kind of concert on there was something else going on between the youth movement in Europe and this town in some very strange way and Claude was very understanding of that and he's he's so the relationship with Led Zep allowed that to flourish I think Claude nobs was your European promoter in 1970 and at that time the name Led Zeppelin was contested by the descendant of count Ferdinand von Zeppelin she even wanted to have your Copenhagen concert cancelled is it true that the ban was built the knobs for that concert of favorite 28s 1970 that's true but we don't really know because we can't remember and I don't speak to very many people from that time now some of them have lost the gift of speech sadly but I can't remember whether it was a dedication to our friend Claude or whether it was a reference to the male sex organ which in colloquial terms in England the knobs called a knob oh my goodness me we can always cut that out whichever way I'm sure it applied to Claude no matter what but it was built the knob for that evening huh people went to the concert to see the knobs well they knew they knew really secretly there but we can't take in vain the name of that of that great family I'm sure that what camp von Zeppelin did was fantastic you know for the whole of the world peace and and soliloquy throughout Europe but I don't know who did the most damage really whether it was Led Zep or he's his flying machines I'm not sure but whatever it is we were the knobs and we were happy to be the knobs yeah and you know Claude used to encourage us to with Jacqueline and Danielle and it was a good fraternity and we could bring our families and we could enjoy mystical treats like raclette and so that we were kids you know I was 12 I was 22 now that you mentioned I realized I realized and I I know which means this Daniel he wrote something about he was he living in this commune Danielle was he living in this commune your video somewhere maybe he was I don't know because it seems it rings a bell now eventually it's mention yeah and so I mean we were welcomed and as kids I mean like really basically I was 22 years old and this is an intriguing and wonderous environment coming from middle in semi-industrial middle England so to bring my wife here and to just go wow I must be doing very well it's just in the beautiful environment it's a but tell me about this what you noticed when you mentioned very truly that it's a mixture between conservatism and and in fact possibility for progressive music to to occur which in fact was quite advanced and yet conservative how do you explain this this mixture both things well I don't know what the explanation is because I wasn't here a month before and a month after the sort of deluge so I wouldn't know all I know what because we didn't really have too much to do with local society obviously they sort of parceled us into cars and took us to rented accommodation on the top of a hill where a cow was moving and a bell was ringing but hospitality and his encouragement was you know very very special and it wasn't kind of it was such a trip because in so many places around especially around America the kind of conservative element in America we were treated like animals you know I mean let's not forget that the whole hippie movement was considered to be evil and challenging the you know the political structure of America which it did during the times of the Vietnam War it tried to move mountains and so you could be I walked the streets of Dearborn in Detroit when Detroit was on fire to get lunch and a car I remember a Lincoln Continental slowing down and the guy putting the window down and spitting at me because I was scum but here you know with Paris in turmoil and all of stuff going on and London people on the streets somehow this was like a kind of some very strange and very interesting cultural exchange which somehow allowed all of us to co-exist but I didn't stay around two weeks later to hear what their bric-a-brac was from the count what's-his-name down the road or the Prince of shells big Holstein is up the hill somewhere you have been in Montrose several times what experience do you have from moto is this a public that is different from the the one you found in other places could you know what is the difference I can't remember to be honest all I can say is that I knew that it was an international public here It was as if there was some sort of lodestone that brought us lots of us here once the game began there was no explanation for it except for energy and I think the energy and the lure of the combination of Claude's bright and and clever thinking led zeppelin's energy and power and reputation and the need for European kids to find someplace where they could actually say this is our scene here was it was it was part of the time you know sign of the times it was magnificent really you know and I was very proud to be a part of it I mean really I was just a singer and I had the stuff that I experienced was you know it's life changing really there's huge surges of energy and in the middle of it all Claude was going yes they must come back this is working and of course it did work and and with the Jazz Festival I was looking at the people who were playing in 1970 and and it's you know I mean I can't imagine the amount of meticulous arranging with very very questionable agents in America to get Gatemouth Brown you know to get Professor Longhair to get all these fantastically juxtaposed people against you know all the the the the bonafide post bebop jazz players of the day and then all these Kant blues guys and then slowly creeping in became more of little bits and pieces of the rock scene moving into it which is perfect you know you participates in many festivals all around the world is there any anything special about the Montreux Jazz Festival well you know obviously physically and cerebral II the intentions are totally different there's no there's no equivalent at all they're not on there are different levels altogether I mean it's like comparing Woodstock to Montreux know maybe Woodstock had far more heart because it was at the beginning of the new days if you like but there's no comparison really that this was always an exposition and I mean I played here a few times since 1980 since the end of Led Zep and again the detail and and a variety it had to extend beyond jazz because so many of the exponents were on their way up or down there wasn't that much you know there's great players but the players with reputation would come from the 50s through you know had gone so obviously the thing has to broaden out a little bit but the locations and the size when we used to play the casino and then on and now the Stravinsky Hall or whatever it is they allow a different form of expression for the audience you know it's not it's nothing to do with the kind of chaos of a rock festival at all and you know the thing about those festivals I've played last night in Belfour and the night two months before that inverter in Belgium and you've got the huge artists of the day presenting amazing Productions which are mind-boggling this Disney World you know it's crazy that the freeform elements of what I used to see here was very respectful demure and it didn't have any of that flash that I've just been through the last couple of days and okay that's fine it's a different world but quiet would you say a bit quiet type of yeah yeah would you blame it as a bit well no I think it was really it was trying to get it go about what it's trying to do it worked you know hmm when I first played here as a solo artist I mean I was kind of chuckling to myself really because I was desperate in the 80s to try and joy create a kind of fusion of sixties seventies music that I've been associated with with contemporary beginnings of that new structure of computer-driven pop so what I was doing was really very questionable I believed hundred-percent in it but the audience found it very difficult enough it's in the middle of these exposures and going what am I doing here and and Claude made a good festivity tried to pretend he thought it was great but I think he was going geez what is this guy doing now you know yet he always wanted you to come back I mean that's of me he never never stopped enjoying what you did continuously up to up to now I would say if he everywhere I did come back with Jimmy Page in at some point I can't remember when and the 90s yeah I think you know rockabilly we did a tribute to Shelby singleton and 19 2001 actually you can mean 2001 with with Jimmy Page and we did it was a rockabilly evening and it wasn't it was all right wasn't great you know but and the next night Dylan played and and those with sort of tangental away from the festival but running either concurrently or in the same ether I think a bit like Led Zep was you know I mean we weren't part of the Jazz Festival but we would definitely work in keeping a relationship with Claude and coming here because we thought that the whole thing was a catalyst for all of us for the commune for the people for ourselves for Claude it was a very encouraging family feel Robert Plant you are a singer your voices of courses is unique in the history of rock could we talk about the history of your voice did you always sing as a boy yeah I did yeah and I was I was I was always transported and teleported by the voice you know my mom sang constantly in this kind of quasi operatic style around the house bouncing she was the issue of cousins and she tended to bounce a lot as she sang and and I loved singing and I used to bow to him I just believed I could listen to Mary Alonso who you know is it was mm-hmm a Hollywood hero but at the same time the way that he recorded for RCA the student Prince and those sort of things that kind of quasi operatic stuff had so much atmosphere that I wasn't in the position to judge whether he was brilliant or not I was just moved by the that sort of largesse of singing and then I heard a little Richard and Elvis there was not very much radio in England that was ever going to be representative of youth culture I could hear American forces Network radio coming out of if I was lucky at night when I finished my homework and I was always moved by by the black voice so mm-hmm as a kid I think I I leaned really towards all that Chicago are and being and I fell into the Mississippi Mississippi the origins of it if you like at least on American soil a little bit later on but by the time I was fifteen I was in a band singing Jimmy Reed songs and I was playing washboard in a skiffle group listening to Led belly and Blind Lemon Jefferson and I still play Lemon Jefferson on my laptop now in the morning but a little amp on it and my lady friend goes how long have you been obsessed by this and I said probably since the first tears I worked it's so good beautiful you know so yeah I've been I've been lucky to be transported by did you ever think of a future like the one that didn't you happen to have lived did you ever think that okay one day I'm which is gonna be just a singer recognized as one if not the best singer of rock history is there something that cross from I never wear you know that's a it's a very charming thing to say but you know even though rock rock was what it was everything changes so there's exponents change like the seasons and when I was a kid I overcooked it vocally I pushed too much there was no finesse but I was part of a period of time and I was in the best possible band on the planet at that time for what that was so there was a home for me and my youth and my expression then but things change so times change and I've learned down the line I've learned a lot of things I'm always very very keen to a student of all elements of music and by not playing too many too proficiently I can make judgments based on emotion rather than technique I think that's really always been my the criteria of my my raison d'être if you like really so I made very odd records and very trite records and very strong records and and I think when I went to Tennessee seven or eight years ago and I started working with Alison Krauss I was fortunate because I was invited to play at a tribute to Leadbelly I think arm it was Sara to me and I shared the stage with Odetta and Harry Belafonte and Clarence Gatemouth Brown who'd spent time in Montreux and Alison Krauss joined me and we did some couple of Leadbelly pieces and i invited los lobos to come but asked him if they would only bring their mexican instruments the acoustic stuff so we ironically we did a version of poor howard which is i'm the new record it will come out in September which is probably long gone by now when you watch this Northern all yeah so yeah I learned I went to Nashville I started hanging out there because there was a sort of friend there was a I was encouraged to go there there was a different element of musicality there and the kind of competitive aspects of rock the rock sort of clientele the rock persona has a lot of ego attached to it and that's sometimes it's quite destructive and I'd had enough I just wanted to go somewhere where people actually were very happy they'd all come from different backgrounds had come into Nashville to try and create maybe the glorious days of RCA recordings you know with Chet Atkins and Floyd Cramer and all those great recordings that were made at RCA people would music musicians were drawn there and I had ended up playing with a lot of them and learning to sing in a totally different way because I had to sing harmonies with Alison Krauss and she was she'd been recording since she was 13 and knew exactly what to do and she was mesmerised by the fact that I couldn't sing the same line twice I had no idea I have had a hold the same melody line I was going to ask you how did you work on you voice I mean there was you you said you mentioned emotions and of course it's clear when one hears you the part of the emotions but at the same time let's face it you have an incredible technique and the high the high notes for instance I how did you work on it mhm well I got rid of that I mean I kiss them goodbye when I knew my game as that guy was up you know you can't use the same boat for the whole of your life you could but still today's today now I'm here today very high something when I got it back again uh-huh I went back to the big how do you work on your voice well one said I immerse myself with the the kind of the royalty of Nashville you know and and then on with again with Patty Griffin who had just the previous year got a Grammy for top gospel album but she was very embarrassed she said because Mavis Staples came to her to celebrate it and you know May Mavis is like from she sits at the right hand of God as far as we were all concerned you know so having learnt this structure of singing I really was missing there kind of freeform element because I've been with this structure for a quite a long time you structure which vocally you can't leave you have to stay with the note so when I moved came back to the UK I joined up with the guys I'd been working with in their early parts of 2001 to strange sensation and we got this new drummer in and Joe day from West Africa from Gambia and we started expressive the ability to sing within the energy that we were creating it wouldn't have been appropriate to use the other voice the Nashville voice so I just started to kick kick it up and now my voice is really strong and it ever because I sing four or five times a week now it's opened up more and more and more you know last night I was just it was a Memorex advert I expected a glass to break it was great I just gotta be SH right because when you create a criteria as a singer once you start losing that it's the first thing that the media will say I can't do that anymore oh we can't do that anymore how many musicians are you know especially trumpeters and people like that Topsy where's Topsy you know it's all that stuff about they make you and then they break you so it's been quite an adventure for me to find that I've actually got that voice back especially now you know what helped me across the road now you know oh he looks like he needs some help in the traffic and I mean if I compare you know the concert you did here in Switzerland Palio a few years ago and the concert that you're about to give and which I have seen now that was broadcast by BBC the other day this year's concert is fabulous I mean I must personally say III personally this is my opinion I just love it so much the one thing this year I think it's it's it's how can I say it's we are with Robert Plant again it seems to me much more so do you feel that yourself well it's I don't know how many are peas there are but this one is one that has a lot of fun I mean the sparkle between us and the moments within the structures of the songs where the Ray is a place to go which is uncharted and I can just come in anywhere singing I can you know do cross rhythms and and missile Mike use and we start laughing and said that it's a great freeform place so if you're happy and you're not can under the constraint of actually having to repeat repeat repeat I mean I wish I could play there's a beautiful piano in there I wish I could play the piano really well but when I've had a bottle of red wine I think I'm great but best not to do that on stage best not to be too serious about my limitations best to just enjoy it and I think really you know I do embrace my life as an entertainer I'm not hiding anything I do what I do and there are new gods and they're very good too and there you don't hear my songs on the radio so people don't really sing along with them so you go to big festivals and you it I'm sort of underground you know I'm not cool but I'm not you know legend really I'm just working it's like a kind of a hit and run job you know last night we played and it was just tremendous and we laughed and laughed and we came upstaging me all sort of group together and I said you know if I never sang again in my life last night was the best I ever sang because my heart was so full of joy with this melange it's great why did you choose this name of your band the sensational space shifters way because that's what we are and I wanted my previous adventure with them was a strange sensation so sensation carries on you know we are moving through different musical genre I mean Justin Adams is he's produced two of the tomorrow and albums he's worked with Jah wobble he's worked with Sinead O'Connor he's he's avoided all kind of that what that world of rock cliche there's nobody in the band that's ever been in a rock band except for me and really I think that Led Zeppelin was way beyond a rock band it was we would draw a page and I traveled a lot through Morocco and Thailand and India and recorded and ourselves and recorded other people everywhere so we I was in a particularly interesting group in those days so to be with these guys now when none of them have chosen that obvious brain numbing path his means that we none of us see the obvious Rock proposal which means that we have a really delightful time we can be very very heavy without actually going back to any of the old cliches in your band there's a Gambian musician and we can see this African influence where does your attraction for African music come from well I'm not a world musician although I've masqueraded occasionally as being part of well music festivals and stuff I'm basically one of those birds that see something sparkle and slides down and steals it and so I have been I've had a romance with the rhythms of the Atlas Mountains in Morocco and and with this the vocal scales that are there and especially the music of the Atlas the Berber music it's really very compelling to me and it's not a delicate gentle expression its ferocious it's really quite something it's it's not the coffee table side of enjoying music from another culture it's the kind of compulsion and the you know a lot of the time now that when we play live it's all about those rhythms with the Ben Diaz from North Africa we all play him and it's all rights so I mean if we could I'm sure that we could be employed to help the Gunawan morocco to clean up the vibrations in people's houses if we through playing away and come out the other side and everybody feel okay you know I mean that's really what music should be it's it doesn't have to be just a study in dexterity and so I think I was drawn to that I've been going to North Africa now for over 40 years so you know I'm picking it up in your new album there's a song a very tender song called rainbow where does the inspiration come from well lyrically I'm basically bailing out of any responsibility for anybody else's emotions I'm just offering my hand when all the trauma is over it's kind of quite glib really it I just basically will do anything I can to make people feel okay but don't expect me to save the day it's a when I explained it to a lady friend of mine she said oh oh oh dear she said it was a you know one of those joyous moments where I'll look after everything I'm saying I'll be around after the event when you got it sorted out I'll be there you were part of a huge youth movement that wanted to change the world and now you welcomed by everyone including by Obama you still think today that music can and will change the world eventually no I think it's a panacea I think it is it is a prescription to take away some of the pain and the stress and the anguish but the great orator zuv music Dylan and on through the people that had so much to say the cause and effect of a particular period of popular music into society it had amazing resonance once upon a time there was a there was a sort of huge movement to question so much of the the decision-making in the United States and Britain and and and the corruption and everything that we know about now we're at the material age and the age of IT and all that sort of thing every the whole things it P appears to me I look now for they for the people who carry the torch and there's so much going on for a while maybe blacker band music was doing some stuff you know playing it down not just for the black community you know but either I'm not aware of it or I just see music as being that release what I want to hear you know but it's I'm not encouraged to take up arms I don't hear anybody singing about Blair and his responsibilities now but he has some well I have one last question Dan so this is a one day when you said that you could have led other lives you could have done other things and remember it's you saying that you were interested in teaching could you have could you imagine you being a teacher and and why would that interest you particularly well I've always been really hungry for knowledge but in my case a little knowledge is a dangerous thing because first of all I find it very hard to store knowledge but at the same time I love the idea of illuminating and having had kids and having grandchildren and being in an in a semi-rural society for a long long time in the same place most of my life I'm very attached to the concept of community and family and today and and when my kids were young they attended a Rudolf Steiner walled-off Steiner school and I really liked the process of children being encouraged to blossom before they were legend you know but now I don't know perhaps I'd be better off being a gardeners assistant you know Peter Sellers in being there that last movie he made where everything that he said that was considered to be profound was actually some vague terminology from his work in the garden and it was everybody took it as being manna from heaven very funny yeah I think I'll I'll stay with the rural plan now Robert plan thank you very very much for being with us today thank you looking forward to the concerts tomorrow here in Malta thank you very much

Channel: Studio NVP

Views: 142,600

Rating: 4.9206424 out of 5

Keywords: Robert Plant, Led Zeppelin

Id: dyTz1mK5KsY

Length: 38min 39sec (2319 seconds)

Published: Mon May 11 2020