Robert Plant on George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight: INTERVIEW

everybodyís Robert Plant thank you I've got gonna sail gonna sort of start with the obvious it's called bandaged oi that's not a new title for you it's poisoning no apparently most people don't know this but you had a big band but before that you actually had been Band of Joy that's right yeah when I was 17 I thought I could change the world and I was so I suppose full of it I named this group the band the joy we hardly ever worked we never ate Oh nobody liked us I have almost no joy and they were we were we were the absolute antithesis of joy but we were great yeah I mean we were superb and we went on to do nothing and we proceeded to do nothing right up until we did Bonzo and I ended up in the yardbirds and all that stuff and I guess I got to the point now in my dotage that I thought I felt like exactly the same as I did then you know oh god this is great what am i doing well nothing you know did you have a moment where I mean you'd had a successful record with Alison Krauss you had this obviously your solo career was going in the right direction but did you look around and say I need something else cuz maybe the next step isn't there there are no steps there's just status you know I mean and when did you learn that in your career like when did you know that uh well I knew when I was 32 and Led Zep been finished and I was just standing there going wow I suppose that's a lot then you know I'll perhaps I better do a bit of dry stone walling or something like that you know how about being a steeple jack you know oh if I like to hide so I was always sort of wobbling around and but I think my liaison really with with the serendipity that chance that came along without some crowds was fantastic for both of us cuz she never sung a song with a drum kit on the same stage be prior to meeting me which was very funny cuz she you had to keep running away from it as a show went on throughout them like she was moving away from the drum and she never sang a song without holding a fiddle so by week 20 on the tour she put the fiddle down and she was and she was you know yeah sure it was great I was doing the same sort of thing I knew that I'd get on The Andy Williams Show and so yeah so it was good fun and it opened a lot of it I developed a lot of humor and good friends down there but as you go to Nashville is an interesting choice because it's not new to you to be around places where music is important part of the fabric of us of a culture how familiar with it I mean obviously they know they know about Zeppelin but how familiar were they with you and and your music and your like the actual reality of who you were well these guys are you know the musicians around there is a sort of difference between a rock and roll musician and somebody who wants to work in Nashville generally it's a kind of you know it's kind of funny really you have to have to put a kind of a cloak over my exuberance at times a bit like you know when you're trying to put a canary to sleep right yeah and you covered the cage with a cloth and I have to do that to myself sometimes down there cuz it's you're walking with the cloth over you well no later on yeah well yeah but you can think of it um but no cuz I mean I just come from the land of the ice and snow you know I'd be four have a laugh yeah steady you haven't heard the ballad version of that yet you with the band yet you do now aren't you yeah I'm doing anything yeah that that's a new place to get in your career because for a longest time you weren't doing all those songs well you know there's a load of ways of skinning a cat really and um I just think that the people I mean this band of joy here is there are six voices on this so sometimes when we hit something like gallows pole it is virtually entirely apart from a banjo intro it's a cappella and it kicks like you would believe you get to hear those songs differently now does this mean something different to you yeah well yeah it just means that you just alternate vocals with somebody who can sing better than you better than me no different voices and I was never in an environment where I ever kind of sang with another singer as a as part of the gig until I met Alison you know so I mean what a time in life to suddenly find that you're actually singing parts and going on I've got to make sure that I stay in tune and I don't do any baby babies or and she be going go on give us one okay no later love no no give us one of them whoa baby did she help you uh will you help me a lot yeah hey she helped you deal with that stuff like connect to to that part of your career I don't see the perspectives at all the way other people might you know you might think about my career once every 2 or 3 years I wake up with it every day right so just do what I do well that's what I wanted about you because I know that people don't I mean some people don't really realize it's been a like half your life since that one was over and you've done a lot since then and you've won lots of Grammys since then you've had a solo career that most people wish they could have in totality but you up but you even when you said those words you see that recognition in the response from the audience you know how I was so lucky that by being very open with with everything to do with music I I was able to go to West Africa and to travel and play in the Gulf states and in chinna's year and attend festivals in in Morocco which a groundbreaking really there's a canal festival an Esso era is a big words but I mean where the men stand on one side of a town square and they're not used to standing with their wives so the women will stand on the other side tell me about why you go there there's some big festivals they want to Maui you went too early and that now people talk about and go but you were there in the very beginning of this why why go there well what did you get from the music there and were you looking for something well I was taken there by one of my friends Justin Adams who's was six I'm one of the big wheels in my band strange sensation and he'd worked with Molly and musicians in the south Sahara in the Sahel which is in the northern mari we got the opportunity to go to Timbuktu and then go north from there and and to play this kind of music so it was that kind of whole lot of love goes on you know some strange journey and afterwards BBC did a documentary about the the whole idea of the Tuareg seen people coming in and they said well what do you think about him and they were most concerned that I was the strange looking woman they'd ever seen you know because yeah yeah yeah yeah well how did you know yeah but um yeah so I mean there are great adventures and they're very good fun but I mean I was lucky to go I was just very lucky to to get in the back door with a kind of tricks that I've got up my sleeve you know she doesn't stick around anthropology more with Robert Plant when we come back I know that this is a great record and I know you did some stuff with it with Daniel Lanois who's a great producer Daniel Lanois doesn't let anybody get off the hook easily doesn't matter what band you were and you could have been in Zeppelin and the stones and it wouldn't have mattered he's gonna make you work for it what was that like without that process with him well it was it was very interesting because I thought I was crazy you know I mean and I don't mind going off on tangents and and him I can him I can sort of embarrass myself but I never try and and intimidate anybody I believe the way through to get anything great out of people is to be charming and to believe in them even though they're crap you know whatever it is you know cause sooner or later something's Goods gonna happen but he's the complete other side of the coin I walked into his kitchen and he thrust a beer at me and said well okay you got any lyrics and I said well yeah I've got about you know three hundred thousand ideas he said give me an idea so I started reading in the poem that I'd read and my son's wedding and William Morris Pro poem called love is enough and it's so beautiful like you know who needs anything else if you've got love so I started um reading this ad to him and he was good yeah yeah it was like Rolf Harris on acid you know yeah we'll do this yeah yeah okay play that there we got a loop here okay now drink this and get close so weird like that microphone microphone leaning over a couch and he's bawling at the engineer press go and we're off I've only learnt this in the last five eight five six seven years maybe properly but that there is this should always be this great amalgam of idea and energy and spirit because that's where all great things come from so all the rock ability that came out of Memphis not Nashville but all the stuff that came out of Sun Studios but Jerry Lee and all those guys they were all bitching at each other they were all trying to climb up to the top of the pile but they were all playing on each other's records too you know sure good you stood at the top of the pile for a long time did you ever look down and say is that all there is no I just looked at some of the other bands in you we were in the right place really yeah what did you guys think what did you think when punk went with the dawn of pumpkins 1977 what do you think I thought it was a wake-up call and I thought it was righteous I thought you know Jimmy and I used to go to a club in Covent Garden and watch the damned because they were probably the most exciting and for the next generation dad it was 17 or 18 The Clash if you like was the next real thing in Britain I think after her era it's for some question jet you really quickly just answer the first thing that pops in your mind Beatles or stones uh stunts good that's the right answer by the way um favorite gig ever um Timbuktu tonight in this country in a bar somewhere there's a Zeppelin tribute band playing and some guy is doing you any advice uh try and dress to the right do you ever look at some of those photos and just go lord have mercy well I didn't but I know people who did do you feel like now at this stage of your life and career and and with the things you've accomplished pose epilim that you have found another identity like you've or you've reclaimed your identity um well it's been a very strange navigational game this which I've enjoyed I mean sometimes the shadows that come behind mirror a little bit bigger than I need them to be but it's been great fun so I've rejected it I've turned my back on it and I can't be any of the guys I ever was before you know I mean you got to evolve is the only way to get through so you know just give me bigger maps you know good to see you thanks for coming in thanks Band of Joy it's a really great record start with on-time the website you

Channel: Strombo

Views: 431,571

Rating: 4.930851 out of 5

Keywords: Robert Plant (Musical Artist), George Stroumboulopoulos (TV Personality), George Stroumboulopoulos Tonight (TV Program), Led Zeppelin (Project)

Id: VdWwBavJ6oE

Length: 12min 8sec (728 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 17 2014