ROBERT PLANT
Digging Deep
Percy on 45! A boxset of 7”s traces Plant’s post-zep progress.
IN 2004, Robert Plant found himself back in the Misty Mountains. He was near Aberystwyth, not far from the Bron Yr Aur cottage where he and Jimmy Page wrote Led Zeppelin III many years previously. Among the new batch of songs he was working on at the time, “Tin Pan Valley” found Plant taking complacent rock gentry to task in no uncertain terms. “My peers may flirt with cabaret, some fake the rebel yell,” he sings. “Me, I’m moving up to higher ground, I must escape their hell.” The music accompanying “Tin Pan Valley” – part rock, part blues, part electronic – fixed its gaze firmly forward. Creatively adventurous, it exemplifies the best of Plant’s peripatetic solo career since it began back in 1982.
Similar reports from across Plant’s long, sure post-zeppelin resurgence can be found on Digging Deep – a 7” boxset whose title comes Plant’s current podcast. Each 7” features two tracks a piece from Plant’s first eight solo albums. As the boxset makes clear, each project has demanded new tactics from him – new collaborators, too, in some instances – and Plant has adjusted to match the temperature and shape of the music in front of him.
Going solo can’t have been altogether easy for Plant. At a time when the ’60s and ’70s juggernauts – the Stones, Clapton, The Who – had become almost irrelevant, Plant found himself operating in a largely unfamiliar musical environment. All the same, the earliest tracks here – “Burning Down One Side” and “Like I’ve Never Been Gone” from Plant’s 1982 solo debut Pictures At Eleven – have an easy-going assuredness, although perhaps inevitably they still sound very much in debt to late-period Zep. Jezz Woodroffe’s keyboard swirls and Robbie Blunt’s soloing on “Burning Down One Side” signal back to Presence-era Zep, while “Like I’ve Never Been Gone” has the expansive qualities of “Since I’ve Been Loving
You”. Blunt, bassist Paul Martinez and Woodroffe became key collaborators for the next few years; accomplished session players who could follow Plant, wherever his enthusiasms might lead.
You can find footage on Youtube of Plant singing “Big Log” on Top Of The Pops from July 28, 1983 – the month before his 35th birthday. Wearing white sneakers and a beige jumpsuit, he looks out of place in a way that other performers on the same edition – Bananarama,
KC & The Sunshine Band, Costello and the Attractions – don’t. But the success of “Big Log” introduced Plant to a new constituency – Radio 1, MTV, Smash Hits. Accordingly, parent album The Principle Of Moments displayed the right polish for a Top 40 audience – though the synth washes and Blunt’s expressive fills reveal the degree to which Plant felt comfortable experimenting in progressive pop.
By now, Plant’s audio had become an increasingly heavy scene. On one hand, he was content to dip back into the past – The Honeydrippers’ set of ’50s covers and Zeppelin’s performance at Live Aid – while on the other, his interests in studio technology continued to grow. The polyrthyms and funky, melodic basslines of “Too Loud” recall Talking Heads or perhaps one of Malcolm Mclaren’s magpie-like creations. “Little By Little”, though a more conventional song, brings
into focus Little Feat drummer Richie Hayward’s gift for mixing groove with unusual patterns. Peter Gabriel’s early solo excursions are a good comparison.
1985’s Shaken ’n’ Stirred, on which
“Too Loud” and “Little By Little” appeared, marked the end of Plant’s relationship with Blunt, Martinez and Woodroffe. A new grouping of supporting players – guitarist Doug
Boyle, keyboard player Phil Johnstone and drummer Chris Blackwell – helped introduce a more mature groove with
1988’s Now And Zen. Boyle’s tasteful noodling on “Ship Of Fools” – a good song, mind – recalled an exceptionally supine Mark Knopfler. More significantly, though, Page appeared on “Tall Cool One”, accompanied by a barrage of sampled Zeppelin riffs. This brief studio hook-up presaged a full-blown Zep reunion in May 1988 to celebrate Atlantic Records’ 40th anniversary; two years later, the band released a comprehensive 54-track boxset. Reacquainted with his Zep roots, the songs from Plant’s Manic Nirvana (1990) opt for punchy, heavy rock. The dryly titled “Tie Dye On The Highway” arrives with a sample from Woodstock, before the song itself launches into crunchy riffs and hypnotic runs. Meanwhile, “Hurting
Kind (I’ve Got My Eyes On You)” revisits the spirit of “Black Dog”, even down to the Valhalla-byway-of-west Bromwich ululations. It is a potent reminder of how business was once conducted.
As is the case on “Calling To You” – “Kashmir” meets “Dancing Days” – taken from 1993’s Fate Of Nations, a consistent and well-rounded album that showcased Plant’s deep love for West Coast psychedelia, singer-songwriters like Tim Hardin as well as global grooves. Compare it to Coverdalepage – released two months earlier – and the difference in the trajectories of the former Zep bandmates couldn’t be clearer. Conceived at Castle
Donington’s Masters Of Rock festival,
Coverdale-page was piledriving blues rock; Fate Of Nations, on the other hand, presented a wide range of pleasures. Not least of those is “29 Palms”, a song about a rural desert city in California – which should give you an idea of where Plant’s head was at – presented in the guise of commercially accessible ’90s rock. The main chord progression and nimble, melodic fingerpicking of Kevin Scott Macmichael are highlights.
The journey from Fate Of Nations to
Dreamland took almost a decade and involved a conscious recoupling with Page followed by a more low-key stint with old friends in the Priory Of Brion. “Song To The Siren” and “Morning Dew”, from Dreamland, showcase a new band – Strange Sensation, who later morph into Sensational Space Shifters, Plant’s current band. Already you can hear gears changing. New textures emerge, Plant’s delivery is elegantly understated; a harmonious arrangement is reached between Justin Adams’ spare guitar lines and Johnny Baggott’s discreet electronic contributions.
In retrospect, we can see that the covers on Dreamland – Bukka White, Tim Buckley, Arthur Lee, Dylan – offer Plant and his new collaborators the chance to take measure of one another. By the time they record their own material, such as “Shine It All Around” and “Tin Pan Valley” on
Mighty Rearranger, the ‘modern’ Robert Plant has emerged, fulfilling his insatiable artistic curiosity. But then, of course, he decamped to America for another trip entirely.
The lesson we can take from all this? Avoid the road most travelled; the scenery is colossal.
Stop Press: Just as Uncut went to print, we learned that Digging Deep has been delayed until February 2020