CREEMAINS
Saying Solo Robert Plant Is Better Than Led Zep Isn't (just) Clickbait
Revisiting "From Hot Dog To Big Log: Robert Plant Hits The Road"
In addition to being America’s only rock ’n’ roll magazine, CREEM happens to be the world’s best rock ’n’ roll magazine—and, it could be argued, the world’s most masturbatory. Because we like ourselves a little too much, every now and again, we’re going to review past CREEM pieces in a series called CREEMAINS. Expect the most deliciously spoiled CREEM, like our take on Lester Bangs’ 1972 review of the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St., or our reevaluation of Hot Chocolate. Lap it up! And check out more from the CREEM archive, here.
If you’re feeling frisky, and your idea of fun is having strangers call you an idiot online, a cool thing to do is to claim that solo Robert Plant is better than Led Zeppelin. Sure, people will call you a troll, a contrarian, and accuse you of lying for the attention which your parents clearly withheld. But you will weather all slander, confident that you are walking in truth and that, even if the statement is hyperbolic, you’re having a good time. And isn't that what it’s all about?
In the October 1, 1983 issue of CREEM Magazine, Dave DiMartino interviewed Robert Plant. The interview ran three years, almost to the day, after Led Zeppelin’s drummer John Bonham died (with the band officially breaking up soon after, in December of 1980). The profile was for the release of Plant’s second solo album, The Principle of Moments. In the piece, DiMartino doesn’t ponder whether Plant’s solo work is superior to that of Led Zeppelin. In 1983, that wasn’t a thing which people considered. They were too busy drinking Tab and voting for Reagan to engage in such frivolity.
Plant is well regarded for a number of things. In Led Zeppelin, of which he has the not-great-but-could-be-worse distinction of being the second least evil member, Plant set the template for a certain kind of frontman; the open-shirted deity of sensuality, a one man pheromone dispensary who maintains an epic level of heterosexual swagger despite dressing like Lestat at the Stonewall Riots. His flair for mic-swinging athleticism ties him with Mick Jagger and Iggy Pop for second place in the most-imitated-frontman-moves olympics (James Brown is obviously number one). With no shade directed upon Plant’s flash—a decade of exposed nipple sashaying across football arena stages is nothing to sneeze at—the man’s style has always been secondary to his voice. Robert Plant is one of the most iconic throats in rock and roll. His voice (a natural tenor, give or take) has been compared to banshees, angels, engines (of steam, diesel, and pneumatic), and all four of the classic Greek Elements of Matter. He’d probably trade all those hosanas for a single credible Howlin’ Wolf comparison, but the white man’s blues takes many forms. Don Van Vliet got credited for a decent growl but would have probably liked to afford an estate in Essex.
While the setting for the CREEM interview, “a superswank hotel suite at the Plaza, in Manhattan, the sort of room where three ‘Magic’ Johnsons might stand on each other’s shoulders and still not touch the ceiling,” was typical for artists of Robert Plant’s fame, the singer’s demeanor was not. Well, the opening of him arriving at the interview wearing nothing but a towel doesn’t exactly buck rockstar cliches, but the rest showcases an artist inclined towards humility and an informed curiosity about the cultural shift occurring around him.
By the early eighties, the punk explosion which had supposedly upended rock’s pomposity had gone underground. It was at least off the radar of the general public and aging musicians (even the most hep dinosaurs weren’t name checking Chaos UK). It had been supplanted by new wave, rockabilly, and countless other sub-genres that were popping up as quickly as NME hacks could name them. But the new breed was, outside of rap and noise, largely repackaged regressive rock junk; if not entirely reactionary (in opposition to “inauthentic” pop and disco), still more a threat to Nile Rodgers’ press coverage than the pocketbooks of those crybabies in The Who.
Still, when DiMartino met up with Plant, the olde gods of ‘70s rock were in a fallow period. Not because the kids had insufficient crushes on Stevie Nicks. More for the same reasons that horsies hated Henry Ford and WW1 wasn’t a lot of laughs for anyone not in a biplane; technology can be cruel to those who don’t adapt or get out of the way. Many of the artists who’d thrived in the previous decade were in a bind. Not only was there all this new studio tech—fairlights, sequencers, drum machines etc.—to contend with, there was also the fact that a number of these artists had spent nearly two decades being geniuses. They weren’t predisposed to just getting out of the way. So some (Neil Young, Everybody’s Rockin’) retreated into rote neo-traditionalism, some (Neil Young, Trans) embraced new studio techniques with mixed results, and some (like Paul McCartney, Carol King, The Who) muddled somewhere in the middle of traditionalism and the new fangled; heroically using the the latter to make the former somehow worse.
As with punk’s disruptive influence, how bad the titans of classic rock fumbled the ‘80s has been exaggerated. Few were as terrible as Jefferson Starship. Some, like Boston or Foreigner, weren't exactly spinning strands of gold to begin with. Some, like Bowie’s ‘80s output, were only iffy in comparison to what came before and after (and were still better than most chumps at their best). Some of the terrible albums, like the Stones’ Undercover or Lou Reed’s Legendary Hearts, were only as terrible as the artist’s had always been capable of in their worst moments. And some, like Joni Mitchell’s Dog Eat Dog, are actually pretty good and received wisdom can go kick rocks.
Amongst all this confusion, one artist managed to not only keep his dignity, but actually add to a career which could have coasted on caricature till the grave.
Even for those not quite ready to jump on the “solo Plant is better than Zeppelin” bandwagon, The Principle of Moments is a fascinating document. As DiMartino points out, it sounds like it could have come out at just about any time. If you appreciate Zeppelin production like he does, Moments is a valid continuation of the old band’s most idiosyncratic choices (DiMartino’s favorite is “Achilles Last Stand,” a pick so absurd that I assume he’s correct). If you see it as a continuation of the playfully lurching pop of “Fool In The Rain,” that’s easy to do too. If (like me) you’re not so enthralled with the glory days of stadium spectacle, Moments is a jaunty and shimmering first chapter: an album full of small atmospheric touches which point to later work; the folk-a-billy melancholy of Plant’s Allison Krauss collabs, the North African adventurism which Plant would pursue with Jah Wobble/Sinead O’Connor alumni Justin Adams and Strange Sensation, and the drone n’ heft of 2010’s Band of Joy.
Principle of Moments is a great album that’s greatness makes sense in retrospect, plus footnotes. Like another Robert who made the ‘80s look easy, Robert Plant showed an early appreciation for both punk and synths. With no disrespect towards DiMartino (the profile is delightful), his priorities are different from mine. For one, DiMartino really likes Led Zeppelin. Which was a bolder stance for a critic to take in 1983. Back then, critics tended to see Zep as not so much a band as an expression of the unwashed masses’ id. So, in not treating the band’s success as a rash which might be taken care of through a daily application of the Ramones first LP, DiMartino was ahead of the reassessment curve. But the writer takes his strange affection for musicians knowing more than three chords to the hoop, devoting an entire paragraph to the discography of Plant’s then guitarist, Robbie Blunt, a phenomenally gifted player who played on a number albums which I recommend if you like blues rock and which, if you don’t have a soft spot for the genre, I very much do not. (ok fine, Broken Glass is worth seeking out.)
All this is fine. Led Zeppelin had some decent tunes, amidst the bloat and borrowed blues. At least a Greatest Hits worth of ‘em. Not unlike Green Day. Further, while Robert Plant’s path to hep cat music was paved in part by his appreciation of art punks like Tom Verlaine, its roots were his lifelong reverence for early rock and roll. This is evidenced by this clip, from a few years prior, of Plant joining Dave Edmunds for a bit of Sun Studios cosplay (though, for myself, were I Robert Plant in 1979, considering Jimmy Page’s proclivities which were presumably still persistent, I’d have maybe avoided songs about little girls). As good rockin’ was once again in vogue, no writer could be blamed for favoring battle-tested jamming over Plant’s newer, potentially faddish, influences. But I can’t help feeling like DiMartino, while conceding that Moments is “surprisingly good,” was not just looking to the past, but secretly (and, barring the existence of a CREEM time machine, impossibly) looking forward to the day Plant might ditch the skinny tie and make the straight-up Led Zep-sampling “Tall Cool One.”
Point being; DiMartino isn’t terribly interested in Plant’s love of new wave. And I am.
Led Zeppelin had some decent tunes, amidst the bloat and borrowed blues. At least a Greatest Hits worth of ‘em. Not unlike Green Day.
In a separate 1988 CREEM profile of Plant, the critic Chuck Eddy wrote (quoted in full ‘cos it’s funny if not entirely relevant), “you gotta admit it’s cool that some superduperstar’s keeping a finger or two on the pulse of the under(wear)ground, even if the Swans and Let’s Active should’ve stuck with their day jobs, and even though the Huskers have been churning out silly sea-chanteys of late. At least he ain’t fallin’ for Live Skull or Megadeth, like some college program directors I know. I told him he oughta get the Swans to open his American tour (I mean, forget the music—think of the sociological implications), and he said it sounded like a good idea (though I dunno if M. Gira would go for it).”
As with DiMartino, Eddy understandably treats Plant’s au currant LP collection as half neat/half lark. It is vaguely surreal to imagine that someone, whose bombastic folk-erettas regarding the sexual proclivities of frost giants practically defined a generation, might sit around his gold-plated mansion listening to the Minutemen. I sympathize with the impulse but I think that history has proven that Robert Plant was sincere in his having the music taste of a record store clerk. That he manages this while spending much of his life with his shirt open, and being thanked for it, may not be fair. But what is. The Principle of Moments is a pinnacle achievement; truly of its time, in a good way, and more successfully so than just about anything made by Plant’s contemporaries.
Phil Collins drumming on six of eight tracks is the touchstone for seeing Plant’s album as part of a new continuum; one independent of Led Zeppelin's legacy. While Collins played with that group after Bonham died, and god knows the man has historically shown little fear of rote traditionalism, the drummer is revered for his collaborations with Peter Gabriel and Kate Bush, not to mention his invention of the gated drum sound (which was widely mocked for years by hipster intelligentsia, but is now accepted by art-heads as a swell innovation).
Besides Collins, consider Moments’s other connections to various zeitgeists. Bassist Paul Martinez was briefly in The Adverts, the greatest of all the second-tier punk bands. John David Williams, who provided backing vocals, was the bassist in Love Sculpture, whose 1968 version of “Saber Dance” inspired the late Geordie Walker to pick up the guitar, which in turn led to Killing Joke, who gave us the archetype of what we now consider “post-punk.” So, when Plant tells DiMartino that he hopes to avoid the “predestined paths” of AOR (which he describes as “Too comfortable. And boring.”) and then goes on to explain that avoiding those comfortable paths is “why the Human League are good… why the English Beat are good… why the Stray Cats are good, why Heaven 17 are OK,” he’s not reciting a script about remaining relevant. With The Principle of Moments’ threads connecting its sounds to the past, present, and future, he’s maybe both right and wrong about predestined paths.
history has proven that Robert Plant was sincere in his having the music taste of a record store clerk.
If you grew up with classic rock radio, the idea that Plant’s post-Zep discography might be “better” than that of his old band probably seems bizarre. After all, which era’s songs do we know better, and isn’t that the real metric? But I bet if you grew up on Mao’s red book, the free market wouldn’t seem self-evidently hip. I grew up in the free market, and I think I prefer it, despite worrying about money like it’s a job. Indoctrination of the youth is a thing. As to whether any of this adds up to an argument for Principle of Moments at least blowing Zep’s s/t out of the water prob depends on how one feels about “Stairway to Heaven” as anything other than totemic.
Maybe a solution is to ask Plant himself:
“When I nabbed him for a quote he once made about Zep being simply ‘the best’ there was, he doesn’t hedge: ‘I think what’s happened over the years is that what sense of humor I’ve got has passed over the top of most people’s heads. So when I’m stating things, maybe at a time when I’ve been fooling around, it’s been taken quite seriously.’ You mean talking about Led Zep?
‘Oh, no, no, no,” he protests. ‘Because actually they [interesting choice of words, no?] were a brilliant band—and, I mean, why not brag when you’re surrounded by mediocrity?’”
See? He’s kidding. He’s serious. He’s both. Led Zeppelin were the best. As judged against their peers. So that’s settled. Sorry for wasting your time.
Except…. Settled shmettled. What’s the point of time if you don’t use it to change the road you’re on etc. If Plant’s claim of Zep’s best-ness was ever true (which it undoubtedly was to Zeppelin’s members, fans, and a whole lot of people who I guess didn’t know about Black Sabbath, Queen, or, I dunno, a little band called Blue Öyster Cult), that specific context is gone forever, replaced by an argument for merit based mainly on how sweet “Immigrant Song” sounds in Thor 3: Hela Funny. While the legacies of honest interlocutors like Phil Collins and the TR-808 loom larger and larger. Within that context, it might be time to update our indoctrination handbook. Or throw the handbook out entirely. In the absence of a hedgerow, we can bustle as we please. Or, as a man wise enough to love both Soft Cell and Hüsker Dü once said: “our love is in league with the freeway.”