Robert Plant thought he was done making albums.
The former Led Zeppelin vocalist shared that revelation during an interview on the Rockonteurs podcast. He was there to discuss a number of topics, including the debut album with his latest group, Saving Grace. It’s a record which was six years in the making and according to Plant, the idea of even doing an album almost ended up in the bin.
“This day, was never going to come, because originally it wasn’t going to come,” he explained. “No more records, that’s it.”
Instead, he just liked the idea of playing shows when he wanted to, wherever he wanted to. “The bottom line is, I never even thought this was a starter in my being. I just didn’t want to make [any more albums],” he detailed. “It wasn’t the end, it’s just like, that’s enough.”
The experience of working with the members of Saving Grace on the recordings that became the album of the same name changed Plant’s perspective, in part, because they were revisiting and most importantly, reinterpreting the music that had helped to form the singer’s artistic core. They had fun, working on songs for the project, working at a relaxed pace with sessions that began in 2019 and they would continue to mull over potential prospects during the pandemic and beyond.
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“You know, there’s a myriad of songs that [are] songs that we know now so well as part of the sort of canon of contemporary popular music going back 50 or 60 years,” he shared. “If you think about ‘House of the Rising Sun,’ when the Animals came down from Newcastle, went into Mickie [Most’s studio and] did that, they didn’t even hear the playback. They went straight on to Brighton to play, or something like that. That song, it’s like, all those [classic] songs, they become something else.”
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How Robert Plant Found the Next Chapter of His Career
Long before he connected with Saving Grace, Plant was feeling restless. When he was paired up with Alison Krauss on CMT’s Crossroads in 2004, the program at that time had a history for presenting some unusual combinations. For Plant and Krauss, it was something else though. “For me, I found it was such a release and such an escape,” he says now. He realized it was time for a change. “Because I knew very well, I’d probably gone as far as I could [as a solo artist]. There was no point in going back to my peer group, because the peer group wasn’t there.”
“There were some great players, but I was trading too much on tripping out other songs that I didn’t want to sing really, now,” he shares. “So if you’re going to sing them, sing ’em in a totally different way — not banjo, not accordion, just give it a rest.So I gave it a rest and went to Nashville, and it was there that I had my second coming.”
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Krauss and Plant released their debut album, 2007’s Raising Sand and received what they might have considered to be an unexpectedly overwhelmingly positive reception. The LP sold more than a million copies in the U.S. alone and the pair were further rewarded with five Grammy Awards including Record and Album of the Year. The vocalist later revealed that the sessions with Krauss were challenging at times vocally, even for the guy who had sung “Immigrant Song.”
The duo put out a long-awaited follow-up, 2021’s Raise the Roof and spent the next few years touring, most recently with a run of U.S. dates in the summer of 2024.
‘This is Not Stardom Time’
Some fans might be surprised to learn that Plant doesn’t handle all of the vocals on the new album with Saving Grace. It’s more of a musical collective, with vocalist Suzi Dian and multi-instrumentalist Matt Worley taking a few of the lead vocals. “I’m not going to be….this is not stardom time,” Plant says. “If people can do it, they should do it.” The Led Zeppelin legend goes on to share that the reason he’s had a number of different groups over the past couple of decades comes down to a desire to always keep things fresh and inspiring.
But he feels very positive about the current alliance he has with the members of Saving Grace. There’s a looseness that he’s happy to embrace. “Which is great and we laugh,” he explains. “It’s being pleased enough [with what’s happening in the moment] not to care about getting it wrong.”
“I think the very essence of all this is that all of us as individuals will carry on playing, and I will stay with these guys as long as it continues to be as good as this,” he shares. “And I think it will, and it’ll grow more and beyond that.”
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Crafting a solo career has been something of a quest for Led Zeppelin’s former frontman.
Gallery Credit: Nick DeRiso
