“I remember the little room,” said Robert Plant when asked to recall the first time he and Led Zeppelin jammed together. “All I can remember, it was hot and it sounded good – very exciting and very challenging. Because I could feel that something was happening to myself and to everyone else in the room. It felt like we’d found something that we had to be very careful with because we might lose it.”
From the moment Led Zeppelin started making music, it was clear that the band was on to something special. Their ability as a collective and their talent as individuals made for the perfect blend, a chaotic and exciting sound that would result in what many call the best rock band of all time.
John Paul Jones was the hardest-working bassist on the planet. Amidst all of the chaotic instrumentation, a steady rhythm section was needed to hold everything together. Jimmy Page was a guitar master and a visionary. John Bonham ripped the drummer’s rule book up, incorporating various genres into his style, making it completely unique. And then you had Robert Plant, a singer who has often been called timeless, and rightly so.
When you listen to Led Zeppelin’s music, you hear the clear range that Robert Plant had. Sure, he’s renowned for his raspy notes of rock ‘n’ roll and the iconic screams that surround Zeppelin classics, but he could also sing sweetly and delicately. For instance, if you listen to a track such as ‘Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You’, you can hear Plant’s soft tones and aggressive voice in a span of four minutes.
Plant has always wanted to continue singing, even after Led Zeppelin split up. Despite his vocal tone changing over time, he has moved with those changes to continue challenging himself and continue making music. “I know the full, open-throated falsetto that I was able to concoct in 1968 carried me through until I was tired of it,” he said. “Then that sort of exaggerated personality of a vocal performance morphed and went somewhere else.”
The point is that Plant isn’t just a great singer; he’s a singer who cares a great deal about his art, so much so that he is willing to adapt in order to continue engaging with it. As such, when Plant talks about a singer being timeless, he is qualified to do so. There is one singer in particular on the verge of retiring that Plant said was a timeless vocalist: Elton John.
After Elton John’s headline set at Glastonbury, Robert Plant made a brief but very poignant declaration about the singer, as he took to social media and described Elton as “Unique timeless and wonderful,” before saying, “Thank you, Elton.”
Even though the music Elton John made is much different from that which Led Zeppelin was responsible for, there is no escaping that their music continues to occupy ample space in the hearts of rock fans. Elton John has also had to adapt his music and sets as time passes, but he continues engaging with his art in a sweet and genuine way.
