Robert Plant on his “perfect relationship” with Led Zeppelin bandmate Jimmy Page
Together, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page helped establish Led Zeppelin as one of the UK’s most lucrative musical exports. The pair were introduced after a gig at Birmingham’s teacher training college, where Plant was performing with his band Hobbstweedle. Page had been directed to the venue by Terry Reid, the former Yardbirds guitarist’s first choice for the frontman of his new outfit, the imaginatively named New Yardbirds. When he arrived, the small crowd had already started to disperse. Those who remained had their eyes fixed keenly on the group’s frontman.
“His voice,” Jimmy would later recall, “Was too great to be undiscovered. I immediately thought there must be something wrong with him personality-wise, or that he had to be impossible to work with.” As it turned out, Plant was the perfect collaborator. Better still, he knew the ideal drummer for Page’s new band: his old bandmate John Bonham. Over the next decade, Led Zeppelin went from strength to strength, with Page, Plant, Bonham and Jones cementing themselves as masters of their respective instruments. While undoubtedly talented in their own right, the individual members of Led Zeppelin also knew how to support one another’s gifts, working together to make a brand of stadium rock far greater than the sum of its parts.
Discussing his relationship with Jimmy Page back in 1977, Plant was asked if he’d always dreamt of being a rockstar. “Well, I didn’t look at it like that. I just wanted to sing,” he explained. “Nobody ever looks at it like that. Didn’t even know what one was then. Still don’t.” Plant went on to explain that his success was largely down to Jimmy Page’s ability to match and channel his energy.
“I’d already played with people who’d got the same amount of adrenaline and drive as I’d got and it just so happened that Jimmy had got more than I’d got,” Plant began. “He could channel it. He knew which way to let it go. And that was the best thing that ever happened to me, musically. I’d found someone whose tastes were basically along the same lines. Who’d got the patience to allow me to—it’s like dangling your foot in a swimming pool to see how deep it is or how cold—accustom myself to everything that would come along that he was already aware of from the Yardbirds. Perfect relationship.”
Of course, by 1977, that relationship had changed drastically. “Yeah, because I’ve grown up,” Plant said. “My experiences of course now come up to the same ones as his. I guess we’re both sort of trotting together rather than him showing me the way as he did in the early days.”