It’s important for every artist to live in the moment whenever they are up there onstage.
It can be easy for someone to think about what’s going to be happening if they keep the momentum going, but the minute that their career comes to a halt, they realise that a lot of the fun had quickly passed them by before they had time to enjoy it.
Robert Plant may have had more than his fair share of time in the sun with Led Zeppelin, but he had zero tolerance for when he saw people getting up to some diva behaviour behind the scenes.
But the only reason why Plant could make such assumptions is because he practically invented the modern idea of a frontman. No other rock and roll artist could manage to make a crowd jump the way he did, and while Freddie Mercury or Mick Jagger did a much better job at working the crowd, no other singer managed to have the same amount of muscle and raw swagger ‘Percy’ had when channelling his inner ‘Golden God’ persona.
That didn’t stop a lot of people from copying exactly what he was doing, though. Imitation might be the sincerest form of flattery most of the time, but when everyone started to adopt that raspy voice and begin to out-high-note each other in the rock and roll scene, there was no reason for Plant to hang around. He had already moved on to better things during the MTV generation, but he seemed to be at least warming up to the idea of returning to rock and roll with Page and Plant.
And he couldn’t have asked for a better time as well. Their more organic version of Zeppelin tunes made them stick out in the early 1990s, but people like Lenny Kravitz still carried that sense of rock and roll swagger. No one was willing to have that kind of aura about them then, but Kravitz felt like the perfect amalgamation of Prince, Jimi Hendrix, and Jimmy Page all in one person. All the pieces were there for a great frontman, but he wasn’t prone to the occasional outburst.
For someone who envisioned all of the songs being played to perfection, Kravitz knew that he needed to expect the same out of his bandmates if he wanted shows to go off without a hitch. But the minute that Plant saw him stepping over the line of what was and wasn’t acceptable, he had no second thoughts about reading him the riot act of how a frontman is supposed to talk to his bandmates.
After one soundcheck wrapped up, Kravitz remembered getting chewed a new asshole by Plant, saying, “I guess I was in a bit of a mood and Robert ripped into me and tore me apart, basically saying: ‘[What] the fuck is wrong with you? You’re in the middle of this great success, you have this music, you’re having a great run, and you should be enjoying every moment.’ It freaked me out, and I was a little embarrassed. Here was one of my heroes telling me what a bitch I’m being.”
Because if there’s anyone who knows about the balance of power in a rock and roll band, it’s Plant. He may have been one of the key figures in making Zeppelin work, but it only takes a few listens to any of their records to realise that everyone is as important as the person up front, and even if John Bonham wasn’t in the mix, there was no point in continuing on and still calling themselves ‘Led Zeppelin’.
But for anyone who is breaking into the music industry, they can only hope to have someone looking out for them like Plant did with Kravitz. It’s never easy to keep your head at a normal size when your name is in shining lights, but Plant will forever be the resident godfather of rock and roll who will gladly take anyone down a few notches.
