Getting hitched right after a show. Proclaiming innocence due to memory loss.
And nearly leaving the music business behind completely? Keep watching for Led
Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant's untold story of charisma, tragedy, and triumph.
Robert Plant was born on August 20, 1948, in the "Black Country," the industrial
area around Birmingham, England known for its heavily polluted air. Nevertheless,
Plant remembers a pleasant childhood.
That's in great part thanks to his mother Annie,
who would always sing and dance around the house. Plant's father, also named Robert,
could play the violin, but he'd given up his passion in order to provide for the family.
So it was Annie's joy, musicality, and creativity that deeply inspired the young Robert.
The older Robert Plant, meanwhile, was a civil engineer who had served in the Royal
Air Force during World War II. He was a pretty conservative man who didn't exactly accept his
son's artistic inclinations. Playing music simply wasn't a suitable job to his mind,
so he had a different plan for his son: accounting.
The younger Robert did start an undergraduate program in finance and accounting on a scholarship
at the London School of Economics – but he soon dropped out. It wasn’t for vain though,
he retained some skills that helped Led Zeppelin save tremendous amounts of money on their tours.
In 1963, 15-year-old Robert Plant's friends and schoolmates were part of a band called
The Jurymen. According to guitarist Gary Tolley, Plant latched onto them,
even carrying their gear but never singing with them.
One day, their vocalist Andy Long got sick, so Plant climbed up on the tiny stage at the Bull's
Head Pub in Lye and took the mic. There are two differing accounts about how the gig went.
For Plant, the whole experience was very intimidating.
But as Jurymen drummer John Dudley recalled in the biography Robert Plant: A Life:
"When he got up there, he was full of it –- absolutely full of confidence."
"What can I say?"
While it might have felt different in Plant's head, his powerful voice nevertheless had a
great effect on the crowd, and soon enough, he was playing with various local bands.
By the late 1960s, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones were truly seasoned musicians.
Jones had recorded music with Donovan and Jeff Beck, and he'd also created
the famous string arrangement for the Rolling Stones song "She's a Rainbow."
He also played with Page in The Yardbirds, and in 1968, that band lost its vocalist. So
Page began a thorough search throughout the U.K. for the perfect lead singer.
The first option was Terry Reid, who asked Page to wait for him a few weeks,
as he was touring with The Doors and Jefferson Airplane. But Page didn't want to wait,
so Reid recommended Robert Plant, who had once opened for Reid's show. But joining The
Yardbirds was a daunting experience for the young Plant, who recalled in a 2022 radio interview:
"We were suddenly alongside John Paul Jones and Jimmy Page who were really,
seriously accomplished, far more mature [...] I was really kind of intimidated."
In 1966, Robert Plant met his future wife Maureen Wilson. She was the one who actually supported
Plant throughout the first two years of their relationship. She came from a hard-working family,
as her dad owned a steel factory, and Plant actually ended up working there for a short time
while trying to hack it as a musician. Wilson worked as a nurse at the time,
and she provided most of the couple's funds, at least until Plant joined The Yardbirds.
Beginning in 1968, The New Yardbirds started playing under the name Led Zeppelin, with
their first concert taking place at the London Roundhouse on November 9. Right after the show,
Plant married Wilson at the same venue. They would go on to have three children together, with
Wilson usually staying behind with them at the couple's farmhouse while Plant was away on tour.
Led Zeppelin has been accused of stealing the opening guitar riff from the Spirit song "Taurus"
for their own iconic classic "Stairway to Heaven." But according to Robert Plant,
he doesn't remember ever seeing Spirit play. And the reason for that is rather tragic,
as he'd reportedly lost part of his recent memory in a car crash that happened in 1970.
As he put it during a courtroom proceeding in 2016,
"I don't have a recollection of mostly anyone I've met [...] Part of the windshield [was]
buried in the top of my head, which was interesting. I don't remember a thing."]
And that wasn't the only serious accident Plant was involved in. On August 4, 1975,
he was with his wife Maureen, their two older children, and Jimmy Page's daughter Scarlet on
the Greek island of Rhodes when they crashed their rented car into a tree. Plant shattered
his right leg and elbow, while Maureen ended up with a broken skull and fractured pelvis. The
only person without any broken bones was Scarlet. Led Zeppelin's tour manager managed to fly them
to Guy's Hospital in London, where Maureen was able to receive the proper care. Plant ended up
in a large cast for months, and he recorded the 1976 Zeppelin album Presence from his wheelchair.
Their song "Achilles' Last Stand" from that album was even initially titled "The Wheelchair Song."
"You just have to pick up and go."
In 1977, Led Zeppelin were touring in the United States, but it was also one of their
darkest hours. Robert Plant's car crash had caused several setbacks, and they also had
to deal with outbursts of violence and riots. And then on July 26, it somehow got even worse.
Plant got a phone call informing him that his 5-year-old son Karac was sick, as he'd
contracted a stomach virus that his mother had just gotten over. Later that day, Plant received
another call breaking the news that Karac had passed away. The tour was immediately canceled.
Plant retreated to the family's farmhouse, and at that point,
he didn't want anything to do with music anymore. As he told Charlie Rose during a 2012 interview:
"There are priorities in life beyond being an entertainer.
You know, there are a lot of things that are much more important."
He put it even more plainly to Rolling Stone in 2007, as he admitted,
"I lost my boy. I didn't want to be in Led Zeppelin. I wanted to be with my family."
After his son's passing, Robert Plant considered switching his career to something more meaningful
and less egocentric. As he told GQ in 2011,
"I just thought there was something far more honest and wholesome about
just digging in and putting the ego away in the closet. Because no matter what we say,
entertainers are usually quite insecure, wobbly characters underneath."
So Plant applied to be a teacher at the Rudolf Steiner Waldorf schools in the West Midlands.
One day, he made his way to the Waldorf Education Center,
where he found Zeppelin drummer John Bonham waiting for him at the gate.
Bonham practically forced Plant into his car and then drove him to a pub to change his mind.
Needless to say, Plant ultimately decided to stick with Led Zeppelin for the time being.
Robert Plant has had a lifelong passion for Indian culture and music, which later
spread out to Northern Africa as well. One of his favorite musicians is the Indian Mohammed Rafi,
as he associates him with the time he was good friends with a Gujarati family that lived next
door to his wife Maureen's family. Plant made a habit of dropping by unannounced just to enjoy
their food and music. Furthermore, in 1972 he would also go on to record music with Jimmy Page
in Bombay, now known as Mumbai. They played with classical musicians Ustad Sultan Khan and Pandit
Vijay Raghav Rao, and this was just the beginning of their love for exploring non-Western music.
In 1994, Plant and Page reunited for a musical project called "No Quarter."
A large chunk of it was filmed in Morocco, with the duo playing with local musicians in
the old city square in Marrakesh. North African sounds can be heard throughout the live album,
including a particularly Indian version of the Zeppelin classic
"Kashmir." Arabic and Eastern influences can also be heard on most of Plant's solo albums.
Robert Plant and John Bonham knew each other since high school,
as they were two "Black Country" boys with musical aspirations.
They never left each other's side until Bonham's untimely death in September 1980.
Led Zeppelin were rehearsing for their first tour since 1977, but Bonham's alcohol abuse was the
worst it had ever been. On the day of his death, he had consumed 40 units of vodka. John Paul Jones
found his bandmate and later recalled, as quoted in the biography John Bonham: A Thunder of Drums,
"I can't say he was in good shape, because he wasn't. There were some good moments during the
last rehearsals [...] but then he started on the vodka [...] But he died because of an accident.
He was lying down the wrong way, which could have happened to anybody who drank a lot."
The news was absolutely devastating for the whole band, especially Plant. It was clear for
him that there could no longer be Led Zeppelin without John Bonham. They eventually reunited
in 2007 with Bonham's son Jason on drums, but that didn't lead to any future music.
When Jason asked Plant whether or not Led Zeppelin would get together again, Plant responded,
"I loved your dad way too much [...] It’s not the same. I can’t go out there and fake it."
"I thought all those years later, you know, it was just one ridiculous loss."
Every Led Zeppelin fan can instantly recognize Robert Plant's unique scream and impressive
vocal range. But his precious vocal cords have been in grave danger on more than one occasion.
Back in the early 70s, he reportedly had surgery to remove vocal cord nodules, and afterwards his
vocal quality actually seemed to increase dramatically. But it was a little scarier
a couple of decades later in the 90s. As Plant revealed during an interview with Dan Rather,
"One time I went to see a voice specialist in London on Harley
Street [...] He had a dish on his head, and he put a camera down my throat and he said:
'In six months' time, your voice won't even be able to show signs of surprise. It's over.'"
Plant was told this was the end of his rock star career. But it's worth noting that several rock
vocalists have undergone surgery and recovered enough to continue singing, including the
likes of Elton John and Steven Tyler. Plant was confident that he would as well, and so he did,
as he went on to release several more records after the doctor's terrifying news.
"I'm open for business, you know."
In 2010, Robert Plant started dating fellow musician Patty Griffin,
after collaborating with her in his music project Band of Joy. The two were reportedly an instant
match on both a personal and professional level. Plant had been living in the United States for a
while, and when his relationship with Griffin got serious, the two moved to Austin, Texas. She's
been a big inspiration for his recent musical stylings, as he explained to Louder in 2020:
"The bottom line is that I really embraced the whole idea of being in that scene and I was
living alongside Patty. And she’s so prolific and such a soulful cat that I thought, this is
it. This is the whole deal of what it’s all about – musical integrity, great company and stimulus."
But eventually, the couple split up in 2014. Plant then made a big decision,
as he chose to return to his home country. That move would go on to inspire his solo
album lullaby and... The Ceaseless Roar. In a video to promote the album, he explained,
"To come back to the Welsh borders and to the hills and the valleys
and the friends and confidants, it's been something I didn't imagine when
I was out there in Mississippi and Texas [...] These songs are an ode to life and
love and the fragile adventure you set out upon unknowingly and unwittingly."