Features
MOBY GRAPE INTO THE VOID
Robert Plant takes root in the ’80s.
On a fairly recent early summer morning I found myself drinking bad American tea in the lobby of a moderately swish Manhattan hotel, waiting for Robert Plant to come down and find me. I was still somewhat flummoxed by the news of his solo LP Pictures At Eleven; Atlantic Records had sprung the information and hinted that Robert would very likely talk to us less than a week previously. But then, it should be noted this 15th anniversary of the Summer of Love, that CREEM and Led Zeppelin, born within a paisleyed year of each other, have had a happily symbiotic relationship yea these many years. In contrast to the bitterness generated by all the duff reviews given the band by most American record reviewers in the early years—notably those in Rolling Stone—writers for this mag may have given the band the occasional sucker punch in print, or had raging battles amongst ourselves as to which LP of theirs stunk, but the band was never dismissed here as heavy metal (and by definition useless), perhaps because of the traditional Stooges-bred CREEM writer's benevolent attitude towards loud noise.