Local Spins’ ‘Rock Legends Revisited’ series rewinds enlightening interviews with Robert Plant and Art Garfunkel on the anniversary of milestone events for both of their bands.
Embracing American Roots Music: Robert Plant & The Sensational Shape Shifters at Meadow Brook Amphitheatre in 2015. (Photo/Local Spins)
Exactly 58 years ago today, Led Zeppelin played its first-ever show in London – sharing the stage with the likes of John Lee Hooker and The Deviants.
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The milestone performance (which also came the same day that singer Robert Plant got married) marked the beginning of a meteoric rise for a band that would become one of the most influential acts in rock history.
So when I interviewed Plant by phone bright and early one morning in July 2002, chatting with me from his home in the English countryside, the conversation quickly turned to one of the reasons for that overwhelming success: the band’s fascination with seminal American music and its knack for infusing those qualities into its own songs.
“I just think that the English have been quite famous for taking American music and representing it back to the Americans. It’s always been that way,” Plant told me bluntly, giving the example of The Rolling Stones releasing a version of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Little Red Rooster” in 1964 and then performing it on U.S. television.
“I’ve always looked with great interest at American music, whether it was the weird two-step of the Cajun area around Louisiana or the swinging Texas blues. Before the Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin, I was wondering what’s going on there? I really was attracted to the intention and the attitude and the virility of that music, and the eloquence and the landscape of the music and the social commentary.”
Plant — who had just released his solo album, “Dreamland,” which featured a cover of “Hey Joe” – insisted that many songs are “always waiting to be reborn. I do believe these little ditties are timeless.”
The Latest Led Zep Live Box Set: ‘Dazed & Confused,’ released in June.
Led Zeppelin certainly leaned heavily on that philosophy, adapting blues classics by Willie Dixon (“You Shook Me,” “I Can’t Quit You Baby”), Howlin’ Wolf and others into the band’s repertoire.
But just like those enduring songs, Led Zeppelin’s music has persisted and captivated subsequent generations of fans – something Plant attributed to its nonpareiled chemistry and singular sound.
“It hits the spot pretty much full on,” he insisted. “Everybody in Led Zeppelin was really able to go to the right place at the right time within the song. (It was) pretty compulsive. In a short space of time, you could hit the mark and hit the spot good and proper.
“Chemistry isn’t a crap word. It is chemistry and it does happen. … It is fresh, committed, exciting and it’s not pompous. It’s just determined.”
He described 1975’s “Physical Graffiti” as “honest and well-intended and timeless, and I’d like ‘Dreamland’ to end up in that category.”
Of course, Plant, now 78, has since gone on to further embrace American roots music with projects ranging from his collaborations with bluegrass icon Alison Krauss to his latest Americana and alt-country band, Saving Grace. At the time of the interview, he praised rootsy artists such as The Jayhawks and Jay Farrar (Son Volt, Uncle Tupelo).
“I think we should be very optimistic because in America where you have so much variety,” he said. “I’ve been listening to the Smithsonian’s roots of American music (‘Smithsonian Folkways American Roots Collection’). That’s one of the most amazing collections you’ll ever get. It’s not from today, it’s from forever.”
SIMON & GARFUNKEL’S ‘LABOR OF LONG, INCREDIBLY PLEASURABLE WORK’
While on the subject of “forever” music, today also marks the 57th anniversary of the recording of Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” the title track from the duo’s landmark 1970 album and a hit single that topped charts across the globe.
When I interviewed Art Garfunkel in 2003, just before he performed the first official concert ever staged at Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park’s outdoor amphitheater, he called the recording of that song and album as “a labor of long, incredibly pleasurable work. It was fun to make that. It was great to use the technology (at the time).
Landmark Recording: ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’
“It’s crafted with real care and … the making of an album is really the making of nine different skills – wonderful lyrics, real melody that moves you, rhythms that really swing, the grooves really grooved, engineering that’s clean.”
He compared the album to The Beatles’ legendary “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” noting they have a lot of the same “musical values.”
“The songs are real songs, and the color of production goes in different directions,” he said. “I try to live up to that record.”
His assessment of the album is validated by the reception it received and the accolades it accrued. Co-produced by Garfunkel, Paul Simon and Roy Halee, the album won six Grammy Awards (including “Album of the Year”), has appeared on various greatest records of all-time lists and has sold more than 25 million copies worldwide.
STAY TUNED: Local Spins will return with another edition of its “Rock Legends Revisited” series later this month.
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