Robert Anthony Plant
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Born on: 20.08.1948
Robert Anthony Plant (born August 20, 1948, West Bromwich, West Midlands, England), is an English rock singer and songwriter, famous for his membership in the English rock band Led Zeppelin as the lead vocalist, as well as for his successful solo career.
Plant was born in West Bromwich to parents Robert C. and Annie C. (Cain) Plant, but grew up in Halesowen, formerly Worcestershire, now part of the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley. He left school in his mid-teens and developed a strong passion for the blues, mainly through his admiration for Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Willie Dixon, Robert Johnson and early rendition of songs in this genre. He abandoned training as a chartered accountant after only two weeks to attend college in an effort to gain more GCE passes and to become part of the Midlands blues scene. His early blues influences included artists such as Robert Johnson, Bukka White, Skip James, Jerry Miller and Sleepy John Estes. Plant did various jobs while pursuing his music career, one of which was working for the major British construction company Wimpey in Birmingham in 1966 laying tarmac on roads. He also worked at Woolworths in Halesowen town for a short period of time. He cut three obscure singles on CBS Records and sang with a variety of bands, including The Crawling King Snakes, which brought him into contact with drummer John Bonham. They both went on to play in the Band of Joy, merging blues with newer psychedelic trends. Though his early career met with no commercial success, word quickly spread about the "young man with the powerful voice".
In 1968, the guitarist Jimmy Page was in search of a lead singer for his new band and met Plant after being turned down by his first choice, Terry Reid, who referred him to a show at a teacher training college in Birmingham? where Plant was singing in a band named Hobbstweedle. Plant and Page immediately hit it off with a shared musical passion and after Plant joined the band, they began their writing collaboration with reworkings of earlier blues songs, although Plant would receive no songwriting credits on the band's first album, allegedly because he was still under contract to CBS Records at the time. Plant brought along John Bonham as drummer, and along with John Paul Jones, who had worked with Jimmy Page as a studio musician, Led Zeppelin was formed in 1968. The title of the band was derived from Keith Moon and John Entwistle after Jimmy Page's idea for them to leave The Who and create a super band with him. They described it as "a band that would go down like a lead zeppelin." After the decision to change the first word in their title from lead to led so that Americans wouldn't pronounce the band name "Leed Zeppelin," the name stuck. Their self-titled debut album hit the charts in 1969 and is widely credited as a catalyst for the heavy metal genre. Plant, however, has commented that it is unfair for people to think of Zeppelin as heavy metal, as almost a third of their music was acoustic.
n 1975, he and his wife Maureen (m. 1968-1983) were seriously injured in a car crash in Rhodes, Greece. This significantly affected the production of Led Zeppelin's seventh album Presence for a few months while he recovered, and forced the band to cancel the remaining tour dates for the year.
In 1977 his oldest son Karac died of a stomach infection when Plant was engaged on Led Zeppelin's concert tour of the United States. Karac's death later inspired him to write the song "All My Love" in tribute, featured on Led Zeppelin's final studio LP, 1979's In Through the Out Door.
These events had a major effect on Plant, and represent a turning point in Led Zeppelin's music, as In Through The Out Door featured a lighter and more progressive sound under the direction of John Paul Jones, with fewer of the hard-rocking numbers the band had been known for. Plant has told an interviewer "I had a couple of bad knocks which, no matter what happens, will always have taken their toll on me. I know that my kind of vision, or the carefree element I had, disappeared instantly when I had my automobile accident in 1975. That kind of ramshackled 'I'll take the world now' attitude was completely gone.
After the breakup of Led Zeppelin in 1980 (following the death of John Bonham), Plant pursued a successful solo career beginning with Pictures at Eleven in 1982, followed by 1983's The Principle of Moments. Popular tracks from this period include "Big Log" (a Top 20 hit in 1983), "In the Mood (1984), "Little by Little" (1985), "Tall Cool One" (a #25 hit in 1988) and "I Believe" (1993), another song written for and dedicated to his late son, Karac. In 1984, Plant formed a short-lived all-star group with Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck called The Honeydrippers, who had a #3 hit with a remake of the Phil Phillips' tune, "Sea of Love", along with a lesser hit with "Rockin' at Midnight." Plant avoided performing Led Zeppelin songs through much of this period.
On rare occasions, Plant performed with both living members of Led Zeppelin: In 1985 for Live Aid (with Phil Collins and Tony Thompson on drums), 1988 for Atlantic Records 40th anniversary, 1995 when the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and 10 December 2007 to honour the memory of Atlantic Records cofounder Ahmet Ertegün, the last three with Bonham's son Jason filling in on drums. Additionally, Plant, Jones, and Page attended?and performed at?Jason's wedding in 1990. Despite enormous public demand, Plant declined a $200 million offer to tour with Led Zeppelin after the 2007 show. In interviews following the 2007 show, Plant left the door open to possible future performances with Led Zeppelin, saying that he enjoyed the reunion and felt that the show was strong musically. Although Page, Jones, and Bonham have expressed the strong desire to tour as Led Zeppelin, Plant has consistently opposed a full tour and has responded negatively to questions about another reunion. In a January, 2008 interview, he stated that he does no want to "go around and around like a bunch of bored old men following the Rolling Stones around."
Through the 1980s and 1990s, Plant co-wrote three solo albums with keyboardist/songwriter Phil Johnstone. Now and Zen, Manic Nirvana, and Fate of Nations (featuring Máire Brennan of Clannad). It was Johnstone who talked Plant into playing Zeppelin songs in his live shows, something Plant had resisted, not wanting to be forever known as "the former Led Zeppelin vocalist." Plant first collaborated with Jimmy Page post-Zeppelin in the studio on the 1988 Page solo effort, Outrider. He later collaborated with Page on the 1998 album, Walking into Clarksdale, which features all original material from the pair. Starting at the close of 1999, Plant performed at several small venues with his folk-rock band, named Priory of Brion.
In 2001, Plant appeared on Afro Celt Sound System's album "Volume 3: Further in Time." The song "Life Begin Again" features a duet with Welsh folksinger Julie Murphy, emphasizing Plant's recurring interest in Welsh culture (Murphy would also tour in support of Plant).
In 2002, with his then newly-formed band Strange Sensation, Plant released a widely acclaimed collection of mostly blues and folk remakes, Dreamland. Contrasting with this lush collection of often relatively obscure remakes, the second album with Strange Sensation, Mighty ReArranger (2005), contains new, original songs. Both have received some of the most favorable reviews of Plant's solo career and four Grammy nominations, two in 2003 and two in 2006.
As a former member of Led Zeppelin, along with Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, Plant received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005 and the Polar Music Prize in 2006. Plant still actively tours. His sets typically include recent, but not only, solo material and plenty of Led Zeppelin favorites, often with new and expanded arrangements. A DVD titled Soundstage: Robert Plant and the Strange Sensation, featuring his Soundstage performance (filmed at the Soundstage Studios in Chicago on September 16, 2005), was released in October 2006. An expansive box set of his solo work, Nine Lives, was released in November 2006, which expanded all of his albums with various b-sides, demos, and live cuts. It was accompanied by a DVD. All his solo works were re-released with these extra tracks individually. It was reported on Billboard's website that Plant is contributing two tracks to the Fats Domino tribute album; Goin' Home: A Tribute To Fats Domino. The performers list indicates that he will cover "It Keeps Rainin'" with the "Lil' Band O' Gold" and "Valley Of Tears" with "The Soweto Gospel Choir".
On June 23, 2006, Plant was the headliner (backed by Ian Hunter's band) at the Benefit For Arthur Lee concert at New York's Beacon Theater, a show which raised money for Lee's medical expenses from his bout with leukemia. Plant and band performed twelve songs - five by Arthur Lee & Love, five Led Zeppelin songs and three others including a duet with Ian Hunter. At the show, Plant told the audience of his great admiration for Arthur Lee dating back to the mid-Sixties. Sadly, Lee died of his illness six weeks after the concert.
Recently, Plant has been recording music with bluegrass star Alison Krauss. Their album, Raising Sand, was released on October 23, 2007 on Rounder Records. The album, recorded in Nashville and Los Angeles and produced by T-Bone Burnett, includes the two songwriters doing lesser-known material from R&B, blues, folk, and country songwriters including Mel Tillis, Townes Van Zandt, Gene Clark, Tom Waits, Doc Watson, Little Milton Campbell and the Everly Brothers. The song "Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)" from Raising Sand won a Grammy for Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals in 2008. The album has been successful critically and commercially, and was certified platinum on March 4, 2008. Plant and Krauss began an extended tour of the US and Europe in April 2008, playing music from Raising Sand and other American roots music as well as reworked Led Zeppelin tunes. Also in 2008, Plant performed with bluegrass musicians at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival.
Robert Plant's voice and singing technique was very unusual compared to other rock lead singers of the era such as John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and others, and these traits helped to define the unique sound of Led Zeppelin. One of his biggest influences was Steve Marriott of Small Faces and Humble Pie. Plant once said he wanted to "be Steve Marriott" when he was younger.
Plant possesses a tenor voice and his vocal style has been showcased in many Led Zeppelin songs such as "Communication Breakdown", "Dazed and Confused","Since I've Been Loving You" and "Whole Lotta Love". Plant became one of the most significant rock singers of the 1970s (and of all time), influencing the style of many of his contemporaries like Steven Tyler, Ann Wilson, Bono, Freddie Mercury, Bon Scott, Brian Johnson, David Coverdale, Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Geddy Lee, David Lee Roth, Sammy Hagar, Rob Halford, Bruce Dickinson and Robin Zander, and later rock vocalists such as Jeff Buckley, Axl Rose, Eddie Vedder, Chris Cornell, Shannon Hoon, Ian Astbury, Andrew Stockdale, Justin Hawkins, Tori Amos, Andrew Wood, Sebastian Bach, Chester Bennington, Thom Yorke and Chris Robinson.
Robert Anthony Plant (born August 20, 1948, West Bromwich, West Midlands, England), is an English rock singer and songwriter, famous for his membership in the English rock band Led Zeppelin as the lead vocalist, as well as for his successful solo career.
Plant was born in West Bromwich to parents Robert C. and Annie C. (Cain) Plant, but grew up in Halesowen, formerly Worcestershire, now part of the Metropolitan Borough of Dudley. He left school in his mid-teens and developed a strong passion for the blues, mainly through his admiration for Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, Willie Dixon, Robert Johnson and early rendition of songs in this genre. He abandoned training as a chartered accountant after only two weeks to attend college in an effort to gain more GCE passes and to become part of the Midlands blues scene. His early blues influences included artists such as Robert Johnson, Bukka White, Skip James, Jerry Miller and Sleepy John Estes. Plant did various jobs while pursuing his music career, one of which was working for the major British construction company Wimpey in Birmingham in 1966 laying tarmac on roads. He also worked at Woolworths in Halesowen town for a short period of time. He cut three obscure singles on CBS Records and sang with a variety of bands, including The Crawling King Snakes, which brought him into contact with drummer John Bonham. They both went on to play in the Band of Joy, merging blues with newer psychedelic trends. Though his early career met with no commercial success, word quickly spread about the "young man with the powerful voice".
In 1968, the guitarist Jimmy Page was in search of a lead singer for his new band and met Plant after being turned down by his first choice, Terry Reid, who referred him to a show at a teacher training college in Birmingham? where Plant was singing in a band named Hobbstweedle. Plant and Page immediately hit it off with a shared musical passion and after Plant joined the band, they began their writing collaboration with reworkings of earlier blues songs, although Plant would receive no songwriting credits on the band's first album, allegedly because he was still under contract to CBS Records at the time. Plant brought along John Bonham as drummer, and along with John Paul Jones, who had worked with Jimmy Page as a studio musician, Led Zeppelin was formed in 1968. The title of the band was derived from Keith Moon and John Entwistle after Jimmy Page's idea for them to leave The Who and create a super band with him. They described it as "a band that would go down like a lead zeppelin." After the decision to change the first word in their title from lead to led so that Americans wouldn't pronounce the band name "Leed Zeppelin," the name stuck. Their self-titled debut album hit the charts in 1969 and is widely credited as a catalyst for the heavy metal genre. Plant, however, has commented that it is unfair for people to think of Zeppelin as heavy metal, as almost a third of their music was acoustic.
n 1975, he and his wife Maureen (m. 1968-1983) were seriously injured in a car crash in Rhodes, Greece. This significantly affected the production of Led Zeppelin's seventh album Presence for a few months while he recovered, and forced the band to cancel the remaining tour dates for the year.
In 1977 his oldest son Karac died of a stomach infection when Plant was engaged on Led Zeppelin's concert tour of the United States. Karac's death later inspired him to write the song "All My Love" in tribute, featured on Led Zeppelin's final studio LP, 1979's In Through the Out Door.
These events had a major effect on Plant, and represent a turning point in Led Zeppelin's music, as In Through The Out Door featured a lighter and more progressive sound under the direction of John Paul Jones, with fewer of the hard-rocking numbers the band had been known for. Plant has told an interviewer "I had a couple of bad knocks which, no matter what happens, will always have taken their toll on me. I know that my kind of vision, or the carefree element I had, disappeared instantly when I had my automobile accident in 1975. That kind of ramshackled 'I'll take the world now' attitude was completely gone.
After the breakup of Led Zeppelin in 1980 (following the death of John Bonham), Plant pursued a successful solo career beginning with Pictures at Eleven in 1982, followed by 1983's The Principle of Moments. Popular tracks from this period include "Big Log" (a Top 20 hit in 1983), "In the Mood (1984), "Little by Little" (1985), "Tall Cool One" (a #25 hit in 1988) and "I Believe" (1993), another song written for and dedicated to his late son, Karac. In 1984, Plant formed a short-lived all-star group with Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck called The Honeydrippers, who had a #3 hit with a remake of the Phil Phillips' tune, "Sea of Love", along with a lesser hit with "Rockin' at Midnight." Plant avoided performing Led Zeppelin songs through much of this period.
On rare occasions, Plant performed with both living members of Led Zeppelin: In 1985 for Live Aid (with Phil Collins and Tony Thompson on drums), 1988 for Atlantic Records 40th anniversary, 1995 when the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and 10 December 2007 to honour the memory of Atlantic Records cofounder Ahmet Ertegün, the last three with Bonham's son Jason filling in on drums. Additionally, Plant, Jones, and Page attended?and performed at?Jason's wedding in 1990. Despite enormous public demand, Plant declined a $200 million offer to tour with Led Zeppelin after the 2007 show. In interviews following the 2007 show, Plant left the door open to possible future performances with Led Zeppelin, saying that he enjoyed the reunion and felt that the show was strong musically. Although Page, Jones, and Bonham have expressed the strong desire to tour as Led Zeppelin, Plant has consistently opposed a full tour and has responded negatively to questions about another reunion. In a January, 2008 interview, he stated that he does no want to "go around and around like a bunch of bored old men following the Rolling Stones around."
Through the 1980s and 1990s, Plant co-wrote three solo albums with keyboardist/songwriter Phil Johnstone. Now and Zen, Manic Nirvana, and Fate of Nations (featuring Máire Brennan of Clannad). It was Johnstone who talked Plant into playing Zeppelin songs in his live shows, something Plant had resisted, not wanting to be forever known as "the former Led Zeppelin vocalist." Plant first collaborated with Jimmy Page post-Zeppelin in the studio on the 1988 Page solo effort, Outrider. He later collaborated with Page on the 1998 album, Walking into Clarksdale, which features all original material from the pair. Starting at the close of 1999, Plant performed at several small venues with his folk-rock band, named Priory of Brion.
In 2001, Plant appeared on Afro Celt Sound System's album "Volume 3: Further in Time." The song "Life Begin Again" features a duet with Welsh folksinger Julie Murphy, emphasizing Plant's recurring interest in Welsh culture (Murphy would also tour in support of Plant).
In 2002, with his then newly-formed band Strange Sensation, Plant released a widely acclaimed collection of mostly blues and folk remakes, Dreamland. Contrasting with this lush collection of often relatively obscure remakes, the second album with Strange Sensation, Mighty ReArranger (2005), contains new, original songs. Both have received some of the most favorable reviews of Plant's solo career and four Grammy nominations, two in 2003 and two in 2006.
As a former member of Led Zeppelin, along with Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones, Plant received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005 and the Polar Music Prize in 2006. Plant still actively tours. His sets typically include recent, but not only, solo material and plenty of Led Zeppelin favorites, often with new and expanded arrangements. A DVD titled Soundstage: Robert Plant and the Strange Sensation, featuring his Soundstage performance (filmed at the Soundstage Studios in Chicago on September 16, 2005), was released in October 2006. An expansive box set of his solo work, Nine Lives, was released in November 2006, which expanded all of his albums with various b-sides, demos, and live cuts. It was accompanied by a DVD. All his solo works were re-released with these extra tracks individually. It was reported on Billboard's website that Plant is contributing two tracks to the Fats Domino tribute album; Goin' Home: A Tribute To Fats Domino. The performers list indicates that he will cover "It Keeps Rainin'" with the "Lil' Band O' Gold" and "Valley Of Tears" with "The Soweto Gospel Choir".
On June 23, 2006, Plant was the headliner (backed by Ian Hunter's band) at the Benefit For Arthur Lee concert at New York's Beacon Theater, a show which raised money for Lee's medical expenses from his bout with leukemia. Plant and band performed twelve songs - five by Arthur Lee & Love, five Led Zeppelin songs and three others including a duet with Ian Hunter. At the show, Plant told the audience of his great admiration for Arthur Lee dating back to the mid-Sixties. Sadly, Lee died of his illness six weeks after the concert.
Recently, Plant has been recording music with bluegrass star Alison Krauss. Their album, Raising Sand, was released on October 23, 2007 on Rounder Records. The album, recorded in Nashville and Los Angeles and produced by T-Bone Burnett, includes the two songwriters doing lesser-known material from R&B, blues, folk, and country songwriters including Mel Tillis, Townes Van Zandt, Gene Clark, Tom Waits, Doc Watson, Little Milton Campbell and the Everly Brothers. The song "Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)" from Raising Sand won a Grammy for Best Pop Collaboration With Vocals in 2008. The album has been successful critically and commercially, and was certified platinum on March 4, 2008. Plant and Krauss began an extended tour of the US and Europe in April 2008, playing music from Raising Sand and other American roots music as well as reworked Led Zeppelin tunes. Also in 2008, Plant performed with bluegrass musicians at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival.
Robert Plant's voice and singing technique was very unusual compared to other rock lead singers of the era such as John Lennon, Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger and others, and these traits helped to define the unique sound of Led Zeppelin. One of his biggest influences was Steve Marriott of Small Faces and Humble Pie. Plant once said he wanted to "be Steve Marriott" when he was younger.
Plant possesses a tenor voice and his vocal style has been showcased in many Led Zeppelin songs such as "Communication Breakdown", "Dazed and Confused","Since I've Been Loving You" and "Whole Lotta Love". Plant became one of the most significant rock singers of the 1970s (and of all time), influencing the style of many of his contemporaries like Steven Tyler, Ann Wilson, Bono, Freddie Mercury, Bon Scott, Brian Johnson, David Coverdale, Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Geddy Lee, David Lee Roth, Sammy Hagar, Rob Halford, Bruce Dickinson and Robin Zander, and later rock vocalists such as Jeff Buckley, Axl Rose, Eddie Vedder, Chris Cornell, Shannon Hoon, Ian Astbury, Andrew Stockdale, Justin Hawkins, Tori Amos, Andrew Wood, Sebastian Bach, Chester Bennington, Thom Yorke and Chris Robinson.