ultimately, I was making records with T Bone
Burnett and Alison Krauss [2007’s Raising Sand]. So
you grow into the person that you didn’t know you
were going to be. Or else you do a rock package.
Or even a fucking boat! So I don’t think I was ever
really comfortable with the whole idea of doing To p
Of The Pops. I found myself developing into this
other guy instead – not complacent, but I definitely
had a groove.1988’s Tall Cool One samples Led Zep and
features Jimmy Page on guitar. Had you
started to make peace with your past by then?
The Beastie Boys had started sampling Zeppelin
[on She’s Crafty, which samples The Ocean].
I thought: “That’s a great idea. Listen to that.”
Because you can take it out of context and bring it
into another zone, which is exactly what we did
with Tall Cool One. We took lots of different bits ofZeppelin. I thought it was slightly
comical as well. Even the title, Tall
Cool One, was an instrumental by
The Wailers out of Seattle in 1959.
So there was nothing new there, it
was just a kind of visit. But coming to terms with
the past, no no no. I mean, which past shall I go to?But in the podcast you stress how
mindful you were of not turning
into that Led Zep parody guy.
Yeah, but no matter what happens,
I have no choice. There have been great
variants of another me, but whenever
I read a newspaper it seems I’m still in
Led Zep. I think the problem is that
nobody can hear what artists who
stick around are able to put out now.
If you don’t go out and find it by
your own volition, it’s not going to
come down the normal channels.
And I think a lot of people who go
to gigs don’t even listen to the radio.
So do you go to Spotify and see itthere: “Robert Plant has made a new record, has
he? Fancy that!”On 2001’s Dreamland you cover Bonnie
Dobson’s apocalyptic folk song, Morning Dew.
How did you come to that one?
I heard it when Tim Rose had a kind of hit with it in
sixty-seven or sixty-eight. Later on in that period of
the Morning Dew era, John
Bonham was the drummer in
Tim’s band. I had to go and fish
him out for Jimmy [Page] from
the Hampstead Country Club,
when he was playing with Tim.
I never even realised it wasn’t
Tim Rose’s song. He did a deal
with Bonnie Dobson, who’s
since become a regular
acquaintance of mine whenever
we go into Bert Jansch world. I just
thought that song was really
beautiful. It would be just as valid
for that to be played now by a really
GET contemporary artist. Just
TY
x^2
“There have been great variants of
another me, but whenever I read
a newspaper it seems I’m still in Led Zep.”
Below: Buddy Miller, Patty Griffin and
Robert Plant with the Band Of Joy at
the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival in
San Francisco, October 2, 2011.Backstage at the 51st Grammy
Awards in LA in 2009: (l-r)
Allen Toussaint, T Bone Burnett,
Robert Plant, Alison Krauss.CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 31