Robert Plant is one of the most legendary singers in rock music history, but his life
hasn't been all hit records and world tours.
In fact, you might be surprised to hear about some of the rough experiences he's endured.
Keep watching to discover his tragic true-life story.
Plant was born in Staffordshire, England and grew up in a comfortably middle-class house.
His father was an engineer, and his parents pushed him to become an accountant.
But Plant had discovered blues music, and he was having trouble pretending to care about
his education.
As he told The Guardian in 1970,
"It was really hard to combine the two and keep a compatible relationship with schoolmasters
and parents at the same time as doing what I really wanted to do."
Plant left school when he was 17 to pursue his music dreams, which upset his parents.
As he recalled,
"I got in with this crew, which I'm afraid upset my parents a bit, and the cleft between
Mum and Dad and Robert got a bit wider and a bit wider."
Luckily for Plant, he managed to make a huge success out of skipping out on that accounting
degree, and he managed to eventually patch things up with his folks.
As he told Louder in 2020,
"I had my moment of professional potential, and because I didn't accept it I had to leave
home when I was seventeen.
So I toughened up pretty quickly.
I made my peace with my parents a couple of years later.
But it was good, it was what it should be."
Although Plant was Led Zeppelin's lead singer, he wasn't the chief executive of the band.
That role was filled by guitarist Jimmy Page.
Four years older than Plant, Page was already a seasoned professional musician when he formed
the band in 1968.
He also had a reputation for being a hard-nosed businessman, so it's not really a surprise
that he took the search for a lead singer very seriously.
At the time, Plant was a relatively unknown and untested vocalist.
Terry Reid, on the other hand, was an established rock singer and songwriter.
While he isn't especially famous today, back in the 60s he was a big enough deal to matter
to someone like Jimmy Page.
So when Page began putting together the band that would become Led Zeppelin, he invited
Reid to be the lead.
But Reid had already committed to being the opening act on several tours.
He suggested that if Page could wait a few weeks, they could talk, but Page didn't want
to wait.
Reid actually ended up recommending Plant to Page, and the rest is history.
In 1970, life for Robert Plant was pretty good.
Led Zeppelin had become enormously successful.
He was newly married to his wife Maureen Wilson and he had a baby daughter named Carmen.
They all lived happily on a farm in rural England with their pet dog and some goats.
But Plant was about to experience one of the scariest tragedies of his life, one that still
haunts him to this day.
In 2016, when Plant was testifying in the copyright infringement trial over the song
"Stairway to Heaven," he was told that in 1970 he'd attended a concert by the American
rock band Spirit and that he even played snooker with one of Spirit's members.
But Plant maintains that it's impossible that he stole any aspects of Spirit's song because
he doesn't remember any of it.
The reason that he couldn't remember either of those events was because he'd been involved
in a terrible car crash immediately afterward.
His wife suffered a fractured skull, while part of the windshield ended up buried in
the top of his head.
As a result, he suffered memory loss and didn't remember anything about the earlier events
involving Spirit.
Being a professional singer puts a lot of strain on the body, especially the respiratory
system, throat, and vocal cords.
Inexperienced singers often strain their voices, but the pros learn early on that taking care
of themselves is vital to a long career.
Even so, plenty of famous singers have had vocal cord surgery to remove nodules, and
Robert Plant is one of the most famous examples.
The information about when that surgery happened hasn't been publicized, but fans have theorized
based on a noticeable change in Plant's vocals.
The years 1972 and 1973 are the most common guesses, as most fans believe the quality
of his vocals changed after that.
They also tend to believe that he became less adventurous, shying away from the primal howls
that marked much of his early work.
What confuses things, though, is that Led Zeppelin's 1975 album, Physical Graffiti,
contains both contemporary recordings as well as tracks that were recorded years earlier.
So the answer to this mystery isn't as simple as listening to one album and comparing it
to earlier work.
In 1975, Led Zeppelin were poised to start a new tour and record a new album while enjoying
their status as the biggest rock band in the world.
They'd just come off a huge tour that had earned them plenty of money, and they had
every intention of keeping that momentum going.
And then came August 4.
On that day, Plant was in the passenger seat of a rented car on the Greek island of Rhodes.
His wife Maureen was driving, while their children Karac and Carmen were in the back
seat with a friend.
Then the car skidded off the road, sailed over a ledge, and landed in a tree.
Plant shattered his right leg in several places, while Maureen ended up unconscious and bleeding.
The children were also injured.
It took hours for help to arrive, and when Plant finally came out of the hospital, he
was in a wheelchair.
Karac had a broken leg and Maureen had a fractured skull.
It was a miracle that they all survived.
A Led Zeppelin tour was out of the question, of course.
The band did at least manage to rally to record their 1976 album Presence, though Plant had
to lay down his vocals from a wheelchair.
He also went through a bout with depression, which is reflected in the album's dark lyrics.
In 1977, Led Zeppelin was a band trying to get its groove back.
They'd been forced to slow down in the wake of the Plant family's car crash.
Over the next two years, the music world changed around them with the arrival of punk rock,
and their album Presence came to be regarded as a relatively minor work in their catalog.
As the group embarked on a world tour, they intended to prove that they were still the
biggest band in the world.
Things got off to a rough start, though, when Plant lost his voice for several weeks, and
tour dates had to be postponed.
Zeppelin finally got on the road in April.
But then on July 26, 1977, Robert Plant received two phone calls.
The first informed him that his five-year old son Karac was ill.
The second call came shortly after, giving him the devastating news that Karac had died.
Just a week earlier, Plant's daughter Carmen had been sick with a stomach virus, though
she'd gotten better.
When Karac fell ill, it was thought to be the same virus, but he was hit much harder.
Plant left the tour and immediately flew home.
Unsurprisingly, the rest of the tour was canceled.
Plant has had one of the most successful careers in rock music history.
Not only was he the lead singer of one of the most iconic rock bands of all time, he's
also enjoyed spectacular success as a solo artist.
In fact, the four decades of his solo work dwarf the 12 years he spent in Led Zeppelin.
So it's kind of shocking to hear that there was a time when he seriously considered leaving
music behind and training to become a teacher.
But that's exactly what happened in 1977 when his son Karac passed away.
As he told Louder in 2020,
"I was thinking about the merit of my life at that time, and whether or not I needed
to put a lot more into the reality of the people that I loved and cared for – my daughter
and my family generally.
So yeah, I was ready to jack it in."
"You know, time is swallowed by every move, you know."
In 2007, Plant told Rolling Stone,
"I lost my boy.
I didn't want to be in Led Zeppelin.
I wanted to be with my family."
Ultimately, Plant was convinced to carry on with music and Led Zeppelin by his friend,
Zeppelin drummer John Bonham.
Plant and John Bonham knew each other long before they were in Led Zeppelin together.
They met in 1965, when they were both just 17 years old.
Over the next few years, they played in two bands together, the Crawling King Snakes and
the Band of Joy.
When Plant was offered the lead singer position for Led Zeppelin in 1968, he recommended Bonham
for the drums, which allowed the two friends to work together on a much bigger stage.
Bonham had his demons, including a propensity for alcohol.
On September 24, 1980, he went to sleep after drinking heavily and choked in his sleep.
Plant was devastated.
In 2012, Bonham's son Jason revealed that Plant told him,
"We shared something very, very special.
I struggle sometimes, just thinking about trying to create some magic again when he's
not there.
He was a very, very dear friend of mine, that I miss every day."
In fact, Plant's devastation over his friend's death is a big reason why Led Zeppelin have
never reunited for a full tour, even though such a reunion would make headlines everywhere.
In 2018, Jason Bonham told Billboard that Plant told him,
"I loved your dad way too much...When your father left us, left the world, that was it
for Led Zeppelin."
"I thought all those years later, you know, it was just one ridiculous loss."
Robert Plant married his wife Maureen Wilson in 1968, just as Led Zeppelin was taking off.
They met in 1966, and she supported them with her nursing work when he was a struggling,
unknown musician.
He loved her very much, and he even dedicated the Led Zeppelin song "Thank You" to her.
Maureen accompanied her husband on the first Led Zeppelin tour, but shortly after the birth
of their first child, she began staying home with the kids while Plant toured.
The singer has admitted that while he tried to be a good father and husband, he was distracted.
In 2020, he told Louder,
"I'd spent so much time trying to be a decent dad, but at the same time I was really attracted
to what I was doing in Zeppelin."
The couple had another son, Logan, in 1979, but Plant's career continued to take its toll
on their marriage.
In 1983, the couple divorced.
Afterwards, Plant dated around for a bit.
There are rumors that he even dated Maureen's sister Shirley for a while.
But he never came close to the level of commitment he'd enjoyed with Maureen, and he's never
remarried.
In 2010, Plant decided to reform one of his early groups, Band of Joy.
He recruited some new members, including folk singer-songwriter Patty Griffin.
He hired her as a backing singer, and the two began a relationship that proved to be
very serious.
In fact, he moved in with her and they lived together in Austin, Texas, for several years.
He also collaborated with her on the band's self-titled 2010 album.
Sadly, in 2014, the couple ended their relationship, and Plant moved back to England after several
years in America.
Griffin has refused to comment on the relationship or its ending, but it's clear that the breakup
affected Plant deeply.
In 2017, while talking with Louder about his 2017 solo album Carry Fire, he noted,
"If you listen to the album you can hear me pouring out my heart to whoever's interested.
Cause that's what I do.
And it's not easy to do that, believe me."
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