Robert Plant - Rock's Greatest Front Man

Led Zeppelin’s harmonica-playing vocalist, Robert Plant, was born on August 20, 1948 in West Bromwich, Staffordshire. The son of a civil engineer, he attended King Edward’s School in Stourbridge, near Birmingham in the Midlands.

He recalls singing Elvis Presley’s Hound Dog in the mirror when he was a kid in short pants at Christmas! Although an intelligent lad, Robert was more interested in music and girls than school. He started growing his hair longer.

Plant cites Terry Foster, a white man singing the black man’s blues, as being an early influence. At age fifteen, he was already enamoured with the blues. But soon he had to decide. Become a musician or an accountant?

His parents disapproved of his pre-occupations, but didn’t actively discourage him. His dad would often give him a lift to the Seven Stars Blues Club to hang out with other excellent musicians who would also make their mark one day.

The Seven Stars Blues Club

Robert Plant and his Delta Blues Band were the house band at the Seven Stars Blues Club in Stourbridge. They covered the songs of legends Robert Johnson, Bukka White, Sleepy John Estes and Muddy Waters among others.

Stan Webb would go on to Chicken Shack and Chris Woods, in a competing band, would become a member of Traffic. Terry Webb and the Spiders would be the first group to feature Plant’s eventual Zeppelin mate, drummer John Bonham.

At this time, Plant gigged with several different bands at different clubs, promoting the blues and folk tunes like Bob Dylan’s Corina. He chose music over accounting! His parents were not amused at this, or with his ever-longer hair.

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Well-read White And Blues

At age sixteen, Robert Plant left home to pursue his music education through practical experience. When it came to music, he was his own best teacher. He’d attend any festival where obscure black artists played the blues.

He adored Sonny Boy Williamson II and saw him in concert whenever he could. Plant also loved the militant “in your face” style of Tommy McClelland, who recorded on the RCA Bluebird label in the 1930s, and Bukka White’s nasal vocals.

Other early influences included Snoots Elgin, Jerry Miller, Skip James and Ray Charles. One of my interviewees pointed out to me that middle-class Midlanders like Plant and Bonham could well relate to the plight of the black American bluesmen.

Oppression was the common ground. Social, in the case of the British caste system holding Plant and Bonham back; racial, in the case of the Mississippi bluesmen.

Snakes Along The Ladder To Success

Now well schooled in the blues, Robert Plant formed a band, The Crawling King Snakes. They were in search of a drummer when Robert got a call from John Bonham, looking for work! After some success gigging, the group disbanded.

Bonham returned to an earlier group he’d been in. A Way of Life was closer to his home and he’d had trouble getting transportation to rehearsals and gigs with The Crawling King Snakes.

Plant was feeling creatively stifled until he found inspiration in Steve Winwood. The performer improvised constantly, revamping old blues material. Convinced that he, too, could breathe new life into the songs he’d always loved, Plant formed The Band of Joy.

Actually, Three Bands Of Joy!

As it turned out, Robert Plant’s Band of Joy consisted of three variations on his musical theme. The first iteration of the band was devoted to playing pure blues, a composite of blues and soul plus some pop tunes.

Plant loved the old blues beat and was influenced by Jamaican friends of his who lived near Birmingham. He performed material from Darrell Banks, Otis Clay and Little Milton.

The band’s second iteration explored the West Coast music of the U.S. Groups like Love, Moby Grape, Buffalo Springfield and others formed the repertoire. Ironically, the manager of this Band of Joy fired Robert, claiming he couldn’t sing!

While on forced hiatus, Plant discovered he no longer enjoyed singing the blues exclusively. He returned to Band of Joy’s manager, desperate to take the band in the musical direction of West Coast music with him singing lead.

John Bonham Shares The Joy

Lucky for music history, that manager gave Robert Plant his second chance! He formed the third and final iteration of the Band of Joy. It was at this time when drummer John Bonham called him, once again looking for work.

Bonham and Plant had a lot in common, including their love of Birmingham’s soul style of music. They became close friends and played together in the Band of Joy for about two years, earning 60 to 75 quid a night.

The group cut three singles on CBS Records and opened for touring American singer, Tim Rose before things started to grow stale. While the group hadn’t officially disbanded, gigs were getting scarcer. Alexis Korner happened to attend one of them.

Korner was a veteran British bluesman. He had worked with Jimmy Page and he liked Robert Plant’s vocal stylings. When the Band of Joy finally dissolved, John Bonham got a steady gig with Tim Rose. Plant worked sporadically with Korner.

Collaborating With Korner

Alexis Korner and Robert Plant got along well, both professionally and socially. Plant made good money but, unfortunately, Korner’s work wasn’t steady. The pair worked on an album called Bootleg Him, which was never completed.

Plant was now a married man, having met his future wife, Maureen, at a Georgie Fame concert while he was with the Band of Joy. So he needed a steady income to pay their household bills.

He didn’t want to return to his days of laying asphalt or working in Woolworths. He wanted to make it in the music business, singing. Unbeknownst to him at the time, two fateful circumstances were converging to help him.

The Fates Conspire

Robert Plant and the Band of Joy had once cut a demo at Marquee Studios, London. A friend of Plant’s, Tony Secunda, managed Procol Harum and The Move. He knew Robert’s vocals were unique, his voice like a lead instrument.

Secunda heard that The Yardbirds’ Jimmy Page was trying to put together a new band. He told Robert to check it out. Plant was intrigued. The Yardbirds had entered the U.S. market . Perhaps America might be ready for him!

In the meantime, Page was trying to recruit Terry Reid as his new vocalist. But Reid was contractually obligated to producer Mickie Most. He told Page that he knew of someone else who might be perfect for the job.

The Legend Is Born

Of course, Terry Reid was talking about none other than Robert Plant! Jimmy Page took his friend’s advice and travelled to catch Plant in concert at a teachers’ training college outside Birmingham. Plant himself hadn’t yet contacted Page.

Robert’s repertoire of West Coast music, like Moby Grape’s, was known to Page from having worked with such groups on tour in America with The Yardbirds. Although he didn’t care for that music, Plant’s vocal talents impressed him.

He invited Plant to visit him at Pangbourne, his boathouse home on the Thames. There, they would explore their musical interests and tastes. Left alone in the house one day, Plant pulled out from Page’s collection the records he loved.

When Jimmy came home, he was astounded that Plant had plucked out the very records Page had planned to share with him! They laughed at their mutual interest in Joan Baez, Howlin’ Wolf, Chuck Berry and The Incredible String Band.

Page’s Band Comes Together

Jimmy Page offered the job of vocalist to Robert Plant, who was happy to accept. Page already had a fine bass guitarist/keyboardist/arranger in the person of John Paul Jones. All that remained was to find the right drummer.

Percy, as Plant was nicknamed, immediately suggested his old friend, John Bonham. Page and his manager, Peter Grant, went off to catch him in concert playing for Tim Rose. They both agreed that Bonzo was their man.

But Bonham was reluctant to leave Tim Rose. He had struggled too often in his career to give up this steady job. Plant and Grant sent scores of telegrams, begging him to reconsider. He thought they were kidding!

Finally, at his old friend Robert’s insistence and his certainty that this would be their best gig ever, Bonham relented. He joined Jimmy Page’s new group, the fledgling Led Zeppelin, although it was called The New Yardbirds at that point.

Zen And Now For Plant

That’s a brief look at the checkered musical past of Robert Plant! We’re now at the point where we get into his career with Led Zeppelin and beyond. Please bookmark this page and check back often for incredible info.

We’ll take a closer look at his early influences, as Plant himself explained them to JJ Jackson. I’ll show you musical examples from live concert recordings that demonstrate his ability to create lyrics on the fly.

We’ll see how Plant’s voice changed over the years and over the course of any given tour. You’ll find out how his early influences affected the long improvisations that the group executed every night on stage.

Finally, we’ll look at Robert’s post-Zeppelin days. You may not agree with his decision against touring with a reunited Zeppelin, but you have to respect him for continuing to produce amazing work on his own terms. Please check back soon!