Robert Plant has revealed his bandmates in Led Zeppelin had no idea he was referencing JRR Tolkien in his lyrics.
During an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on November 4th, Plant, who is currently on his first US tour with his new band Saving Grace, reflected on the impact of Tolkien on his work and how it manifested itself within his lyrics.
“Tolkien really opened the door to all that dark age, meander of history,” Plant said, before Colbert highlighted how his literary work inspired Led Zeppelin.
Led Zeppelin songs which directly reference the world that Tolkien built include ‘Ramble On’, ‘Over the Hills and Far Away’, ‘Misty Mountain Hop’, and ‘The Battle of Evermore’.
At the time, these references were likely lost on most listeners, and now, Plant has confirmed that his bandmates Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham were also unaware of the true meaning behind those lyrics.
He told Colbert, “It didn’t exist at the time. Tolkien, he’d had his moment, I guess. I guess The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings had subsided.”
The rock singer went on to say why he connected strongly with Tolkien’s work and how it offers a reminder of home, sharing “It spoke to me because he lived and his points of reference were very close to where I lived, and very close to where my parents unwittingly used to take me through this landscape.”
Plant then detailed how he was able to learn from the landscape, sharing “you can read what the landscape gave you from the old-times before there were highways and all that stuff.”
The former Led Zeppelin frontman described it as “evocative”, noting, “I think Tolkien had it down and it’s so remarkable, this is the end of my career by the way, but it’s so remarkable you can have a culture that’s shunted into the west side of Britain that has nothing to do with English at all, the Welsh are British, and so, the mix of all the legend, space-shifting and all that stuff, it’s there. It’s 15 miles from where I live.”
Plant’s ongoing tour with Saving Grace in North America continues tonight (November 5th) at the Paramount in Brooklyn, and will conclude in California on November 23rd. Then, next month, he will return to the UK for a ten-date tour that will wrap up at York Barbican on December 23rd.
