Robert Plant: A Life (38 page)

Robert Plant turned 65 in August 2013. In his home country he is now eligible for a bus pass and a state pension. In many respects he seems both settled and content. He and Patty Griffin divide their time between his homes in England and Wales and Austin, Texas, where Plant rents what he described in an interview with the
Independent
’s Tim Cumming as an “an old crack house.”

In Texas Plant and Griffin are regular faces at Austin’s many fine blues and country music venues. Back in the Midlands the two of them are just as likely to be seen together in Plant’s village pub or of a morning in the local coffee shop. Plant’s friend and neighbor there, Kevyn Gammond, recalls spending Christmas 2013 with the pair of them. He and Plant bought each other the same gift, a box set of 1950s films featuring the British comic actor Leslie Phillips.

“Phillips is one of Robert’s great heroes,” Gammond reveals. “At one time he used to check into hotels under Phillips’s name, and Robert had got him to sign my collection for me. We were sat there, exchanging these presents and enthusing about Leslie Phillips, and Robert looked at me and said, ‘So, it’s come to this.’ ”

And yet, however grounded Plant has appeared to remain, however everyday his foibles, his is not a normal life, at least not in the sense the rest of us would define normal. He has been a rock star since he was nineteen years old, feted and fawned over for all of his adult years. As recently as May 2013 he was forced to take out a restraining order against a female fan, Alysson Billings, who he said was obsessive and allegedly believed she was having a relationship with him. The website TMZ.com reported that in court papers, Plant had alleged that Billings had bombarded him for three years with gifts and messages, her entreaties taking on a darker turn when he began dating Patty Griffin. “Your betrayal with another woman still stabs my mind,” she is said to have written him. “She’s got you so pussy-whipped and henpecked, it makes me want to puke.”

Then again, he has seen and tasted more than most people ever do, although none of this has inured him from the dreadful pain of loss. That ache and those memories are anchored to the very depths of his soul. Perhaps it has been this that has kept him going on, heading for the light of the new and in doing so keeping out of the shadows.

He admitted as much when speaking to Mat Snow of
Mojo
magazine in 1994. “I’ve lost too many people around me to even see any empty spaces,” he said. “I know there’s emptiness in my heart but I fill up the places.”

The journey he has followed through music has been remarkable, and not just for the heights he has gone to with Zeppelin or the fact of him standing tall on his own. It is more that he is still curious, still questing, still wanting to be challenged and surprised. This, at a time when almost all of his peers have accepted their lot, stopped asking or reaching for more, nothing left to do but wait for their dotage.

Looking for parallels one could point to Johnny Cash, who managed such a great late run in the company of producer Rick Rubin, or Bob Dylan, even now able to touch greatness, or Leonard Cohen and Neil Young, this despite their best work being long gone. Each of them now keeps to their own furrow, however, and in this respect Plant is unique. For him there have been no self-imposed barriers.

Not everything he has done has worked. Since Zeppelin there has perhaps been just a small percentage of it that would qualify as great. But most often he has been good and better, and one could not once have called his next move with any degree of certainty.

“I’m just so excited about what I do,” he told me a couple of years ago. “I look after it like a baby child, as Robert Johnson would say. I’m a very lucky guy. For the contacts I have—a thousand pen pals, some of who speak Tamasheq and live south of the Sahara.

“My whole deal is that I can’t do anything alone. I can’t consider doing a thing without going out and press-ganging bright souls and spirits. That’s what I look for, some kind of radiance and an innocent kindness. I know that sounds fucking hippy, but there’s not a thing I can go near that doesn’t have that equation.

“I can’t say that I’m fortunate in that respect, because I put a lot into it, but my rewards aren’t the gongs, the lifetime achievements and all that . . . stuff. It’s more that, with the insatiable love of music and the weaponry I have, the repertoire I can go in to now is phenomenal.”

He paused then to consider how fast time passes, his mind shooting off at another tangent as it tends to do. He recalled a former girlfriend, five years past, and how she had urged him to commit to a certain future. “She wanted to hear the sound of a pushchair, I think,” he said. “So I promised her a trip to the seaside instead.”

Plant said he took this unfortunate girl to Cleethorpes, a windswept town on the English east coast, and then on a chill afternoon to see a football match. “We went to a good fish and chip shop, too,” he protested. “Then we split up. Well, I ran off with Miss Lapland. I’m seeing her again next week, actually. Lovely girl.”

In the telling of this there was a wicked glint in his pale blue eyes, those eyes that have seen so much. Later I wrote to him asking how he would feel about looking back over the full span of his life and giving it his own perspective.

His reply ran to a single line. He said: “Thank you for asking, but I think it’s too early in my career for me to be doing that—there’s so much more to come.”

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not have been possible without the help and guidance of many good souls. I am well aware that most sane folk consider a long list of names to be as enticing as root-canal work but it would be very much remiss of me not to recognize their significant contributions.

I must first thank Robert Plant for past interviews and, although he did not authorize it, for allowing me to go where I did during the months of researching this book.

A big tip of the hat to my incomparable agent Matthew Hamilton at Aitken Alexander Associates for services above and beyond the call of duty. Thanks, too, to my man in New York, Matthew Elblonk at DeFiore and Company. I owe much to Natalie Jerome at HarperCollins in London on account of her wise urgings and promptings, and for the same to Denise Oswald at HarperCollins in New York. Thanks, too, to Simon Gerratt and Mark Bolland, my editor par excellence, and to all those at HarperCollins who have worked on this project.

My wife Denise Jeffrey did a sterling research job. I am also indebted to the following: Nicola Powell, Barbara “BC” Cherone, Bernard MacMahon, Steve Morris, Neil Storey, Trudie Myerscough-Harris, Frances McMahon, Paul Brannigan, Mark Blake, Max Lousada, Dave Ling, Simon Raymonde, William Rice, Sue Sillitoe, John Woodhouse, Paul Berry at Wolverhampton Wanderers FC, Julie Wilde at King Edward VI College in Stourbridge, Dave Brolan, and to Paul Toms for IT salvation.

I would have been lost without all of those who were gracious enough to allow me to interview them for this book—and not just for their time and insights, but often as not for many other kindnesses, too. Thank you: Jim Lea, Dave Hill, Ross Halfin, Kim Fowley, Anton Brookes, Richard Cole, Bill Flanagan, Glenn Hughes, Bill Bonham, Nigel Eaton, Doug Boyle, Andrew Hewkin, Marco Giovino, Hossam Ramzy, Steve Gorman, Mike Kellie, Steve Bull, Mark Stanway, Christopher Selby, John Crutchley, Bob Harris, Jody Craddock, Michael Des Barres, Carole Williams, Dave Pegg, Roy Harper, Laurie Hornsby, Tony Billingham, Phill Brown, Mike Davies, Andy Edwards, Bev Pegg, Perry Foster, Dennis Sheehan, Chris Hughes, Michael Richards, Tim Palmer, Benji LeFevre, Roy Williams, Colin Roberts, Mark “Spike” Stent, Trevor Burton, Jezz Woodroffe, John Ogden, Najma Akhtar, Chris Blackwell, Kevyn Gammond, Gary Tolley, John Dudley, Stan Webb, David “Rowdy” Yeats and Dave Lewis.

I have also been fortunate enough to interview Jimmy Page on two previous occasions and thank him for that now.

I am likewise grateful to all the writers, journalists and photographers whose work has informed and illustrated this work.

Whatever is good in this book is thanks to all of the above. Any faults or inaccuracies are mine.

I was first inspired to write by the encouragement and patience of good teachers—Mrs. Godby, Mr. Bowler, Mrs. Jeavons, Mrs. Hinton, Mrs. Wymer and Geoff Sutton. And most of all by my mum and dad, who have never not supported me and who have always pointed me in the right direction.

Thanks and much love also to Mark and ’Tashi Rees-Martinez, to “Uncle” Michael Rees for his great generosity and invaluable help, and to all the members of the Rees and Jeffrey clans.

I consider myself hugely lucky to have been able to earn my living writing—and pontificating—about music for two-decades-and-counting now. I would not have been able to do so had I not come into contact with Steve Morris, Phil Alexander, Dave Henderson or Malcolm Dome. I am profoundly grateful to each of them. I also gained nothing but good from working alongside Marcus Rich, Jason Arnopp, Caroline Fish, Scarlet Borg, Dave Everley, Lucy Williams, Jo Kendall, Stuart Williams, Gareth Grundy, Matt Mason, Simon McEwen, Steve Peck, Russ O’Connell, Ian Stevens, Matt Yates, Ashlea Mackin, Mark Taylor, Warren Jackson and all the other fine folk who inspired and tolerated me through many very happy years at
Kerrang!
and
Q
magazines.

This book was written to the music of Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant, the Grateful Dead, Buffalo Springfield, Moby Grape, Jefferson Airplane, Fairport Convention, Van Morrison, the Band, the Byrds, Love, Alison Krauss, Patty Griffin and Gillian Welch. The pleasure was all mine.

SOURCES

BOOKS

Alan Clayson,
The Origin of the Species: Led Zeppelin—How, Why and Where It All Began
, Chrome Dreams.

Charles R. Cross,
Led Zeppelin: Shadows Taller than Our Souls
, Aurum.

Neil Daniels,
Robert Plant: Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Page & the Solo Years
, Independent Music Press.

Stephen Davis,
Hammer of the Gods
, William Morrow & Company.

Stephen Davis,
LZ-’75: The Lost Chronicles of Led Zeppelin’s 1975 American Tour
, Fourth Estate.

Pamela Des Barres,
I’m with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie
, Helter Skelter Publishing.

Peter Guralnick,
Careless Love
, Abacus.

Barney Hoskyns,
Led Zeppelin: The Oral History of the World’s Greatest Rock Band
, Wiley.

Barney Hoskyns,
Waiting for the Sun: Strange Days, Weird Scenes and the Sound of Los Angeles
, Bloomsbury.

Nick Kent,
Apathy for the Devil
, Faber & Faber.

Andy Neill and Matt Kent,
Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere: A Complete Chronicle of The Who 1958–1978
, Sterling Publishing.

Andrew Loog Oldham,
Stoned
, Vintage.

Paul Oliver,
Blues Fell This Morning
, Collier Books.

Richard Cole with Richard Trubo,
Stairway to Heaven: Led Zeppelin Uncensored
, HarperCollins.

Brad Tolinski,
Light & Shade: Conversations with Jimmy Page
, Virgin Books.

Mick Wall,
When Giants Walked the Earth: A Biography of Led Zeppelin
, Orion Books.

Ned Williams,
A Century of the Black Country
, The History Press Ltd.

Rob Young,
Electric Eden: Unearthing Britain’s Visionary Music,
Faber & Faber.

ARTICLES

Phil Alexander, Led Zeppelin feature,
Mojo
, December 2012.

Jacoba Atlas, Robert Plant interview,
Circus
, March 1970.

Mark Blake, “Led Zeppelin: Let There Be Rock,”
Q
, March 2005.

Chris Charlesworth, Robert Plant interview,
Melody Maker
, February 8, 1975.

Chris Charlesworth, “Robert Plant: Plantations,”
Creem
, May 1976.

Alvaro Costa, Unpublished Page and Plant interview, 1995.

Cameron Crowe, “The Durable Led Zeppelin,”
Rolling Stone
, March 13, 1975.

Tim Cumming, Robert Plant interview,
Independent
, July 2012.

Stephen Dalton, Robert Plant interview,
The National
, April 2009.

Anthony DeCurtis, “Refuelled and Reborn,”
Rolling Stone
, February 23, 1995.

Dave DiMartino, “Hot Dog to Big Log,”
Creem
, October 1983.

Chuck Eddy, “Robert Plant: Technobilly,”
Creem
, June 1988.

David Fricke, Robert Plant interview,
Rolling Stone
, March 24, 1988.

David Fricke, “The Return of Led Zeppelin,”
Rolling Stone
, December 13, 2007.

David Fricke, “Beauty and the Beast,”
Rolling Stone
, June 26, 2008.

Deborah Frost, “Robert Plant: Last of the Red-Hot Rock Stars,”
Spin
, 1993.

Andy Gill, Robert Plant interview,
Independent
, November 16, 2010.

Tom Hibbert, “Robert Plant: Guilty!,”
Q
, March 1988.

Barney Hoskyns, Robert Plant interview,
Rock’s Backpages
, 2003.

Barney Hoskyns, Robert Plant interview,
Tracks
, 2003.

John Hutchinson, Robert Plant interview,
Record Magazine
, September 1983.

Cliff Jones, Robert Plant interview,
Rock CD
, April 1993.

James McNair, Robert Plant interview,
Mojo
, July 2002.

Charles Shaar Murray, “Robert Plant—and That Below-the-Belt Surge,”
NME
, June 23, 1973.

Mark Petracca, Robert Plant interview,
Creem
, September 1993.

Stephen Rodrick, Robert Plant interview,
Rolling Stone
, January 20, 2011.

Steven Rosen, Robert Plant interview,
Guitar World
, July 1986.

Robert Sandall, “Led Who?,”
Q
, May 2008.