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.

And it's fitting that Plant should make his re-emergence as a solo in 1982, as a strong party line seems to be emerging in this year of "new wave" breakthroughs such as the Human League and the Go-Go's (if you can believe they have anything in common). I witnessed the audience at a local Detroit cable show chanting insults about radio gods Journey, Foreigner...and Led Zeppelin. It's tiresome, this knee jerk noo wave reactionary philosophy. High schools are divided into long-hairs and short-hairs, and the shorthaired kid who snaps up Soft Cell wouldn't be caught dead with a record featuring a musician with hair beyond his earlobe. Scratch, then, the early Kinks records, those shaggy Yardbirds, Love, the Doors, the MC5. My close-cropped youngest brother has found he likes Creedence Clearwater Revival, so I'm looking to gift him with the CCR album featuring the grottiest, hairiest picture of Fogerty resplendent in flannel so as to shock his post-modernist senses. Me, I prepped for this interview not merely by playing LZ albums, but also listening to the Troggs and willing myself into an anti-Anti-Nowher^ League sort of mood.

But whether they're the type to admit it in public or not, Zeppelin fans are still legion, and although it's been three years since the last album In Through the Out Door and two years since they performed onstage together, rumors about the remaining members of the band skitter around the country with peculiar intensity. Nobody seems to have really believed the statement released by Zeppelin management after John Bonham's death in 1980—in part: "...the loss of our dear friend.. .together with the sense of undivided harmony felt by ourselves and our manager have led us to decide that we could not continue as we were." Or perhaps "as we were" was too promising a phrase, and implied a possibility more tangible than the band really felt. Interest in the band has been stoked by a steady stream of kitchen table mags with eyerebuffing U-Paste-'Em graphics, and a New Jersey ticket agency was taking orders for tickets for a "Led Zep Fall '82" American tour featuring Cozy Powell or John Bonham s son Jason—or both—on drums.

"...We were a four-piece band— always a four-piece band— and we're not a four-piece band. So we don't tour with anybody else. You don't replace anybody."

At any rate, a conversation with Robert Plant can't be approached on a simple level; whatever the project he was seeing (some of) the press to talk about, he is, whether he likes it or not, a figure with considerable poetic resonance. Plant's lung-piercing wail defined the male rock voice in the '70s Marshall Crenshaw would have us pretend never happened. 1982 kulchur stars Bob & Doug McKenzie defined their music as "not quite 'Stairway to Heaven' yet" and countless ABC FM stations across the country use a TV commercial featuring a crayon-on-film live performance Plant gyrating onstage in his archetypal leg-splayed, head thrown back and arms flailing rock god position, as the visual epitome of the rock 'n' roll they play. You could say that J. Kordosh approached Aldo Nova with somewhat less complexity of feeling than I awaited Mr. Plant in the ritzy hotel lobby. It helps that Plant is a genuinely sunny individual, as I'd found on my only other meeting with him five years ago. When I phoned up to his room he'd immediately leaped to the verbal offensive with: "So, are you in a good mood?" Was he, I riposted? "Of course!" he boomed, having already gone out to breakfast and had a swim at an unmusicianly a.m. hour. There was no mistaking his brisk athletic gait when he strode into my line of vision, a tall Anglo with the trademark blond locks trimmed to a 1969 New Yardbirds length, but I was surprised when he pegged my face as one he'd met in Chicago during the '78 American tour. "My, you have a good memory," I remarked. We settled on the quiet of his suite to smoke cigarettes (his Marlboros), talk, and see who could scratch their head more. Looking as bustingly healthy as ever, Robert admitted that he was playing soccer again with no lingering effects from his 1975 car accidentshattered leg, "as long as I don't play midfield, there's too much running irt midfield."

Having heard Pictures at Eleven briefly, amidst the bustle of Atlantic's offices, I got a quick scan of the liner notes and saw that his guitarist was Robbie Blunt. Him I had heard of...

"Oh, you remembered?" quipped a grinning Plant. "Gosh, you have a good memory!"

As if I didn't know from reading past interviews, Plant delights in the mocking phrase delivered in his seemingly innocent, exuberant Midlands voice.

"Yeah, Robbie's been in Silverhead, played with Christine McVie in Chicken Shack.

"What happened was, as Zeppelin ended," he paused for emphasis, "finished, I went away and sort of sat down, kind of with my head in my hands, wondering what on earth I was going to

do. Didn't really have much of an idea, and was still in the same physical position when a guy called Andy Sylvester—he said that he'd been offered a gig locally doing a gig with a pickup rhythm and blues band. Horn sections and all that sort of thing; three vocalists, two guitars...big seven-piece band. Would I sing? It sounded like a good idea, it was definitely back to the roots, back to a club probably twice the size of this room. So I said 'yeah,' a little hesitantly to begin with.

...the music...it,s not wishy-washy. It's not soft. It has intensity, which people probably didn't reckon I contributed to in the past.

"As I started off, I enjoyed it so much that we started working around the country in small clubs...we played for about six or eight weeks, playing universities and stuff, very anonymously for what difference it makes." He guffawed. "You know, just gives me the freedom to play loads of rhythm and blues and rock 'n' roll without people immediately going 7 know who 'e is, why doesn't 'e play one of his records?!'

"So as the nights went on," he continued, "Robbie started getting a little lacklustre with it, getting a bit fed up with playin' just standard blues, and more or less having to work within a framework that was pre-ordained every night. Same old story, he started getting stale. So we started working on new material.

"Uh.. .1 never thought it was going to be particularly easy to write with anybody, after working with Jimmy for so long, and it being so easy and natural. And so I had this great phobia that I couldn't, that the whole thing was going to be unapproachable, both to play with other people, seriously, on this kind of level, and to write, too. But it didn't, it just flowed out. Obviously I've got a lot inside me that has to come out periodically." He pawed his hair thoughtfully. "Slowly but surely we started looking for other guys who might be the right people to try...and just go into the middle of nowhere," he feigned a bored face. "You know, the usual old routine, it's old hat, really, but that's how things have to start. It was a process of elimination, finding guys and seeing whether they fit the pattern. "

His drummers—Cozy Powell and Phil Collins—were certainly well-known.

"Oh yeah, well! What was I gonna do, you can't gamble with a drunfimer. So we found Paul Martinez, who played with Robbie before, and Jezz Woodroffe, the keyboard player, who played with nobody and preferred to play by himself...with himself, With his synthesizers..." Har har har...

"Jezz has done a lot of film soundtrack work, lots of video films, but it's usually nature stuff—wildlife movies and stuff like that—that he just soundtracks...underwater synthesizers. And he does a lot of underwater movies.

Seems to fit right in with our American image of English synth eccentrics.

"Well all synthesizer guys are sort of.. .it's nice to get a film and make it go WAH\

"So that was it, we went to the statutory house in the wilds, where there was no interruptions, and I called Cozy, who at the time was underwater as well—he was doing some diving in the Caribbean—and I asked him if he'd like to come and play, and he said 'Yeah, love to come!' And he got off the plane, into his car and came straight there. And he sort of gave the whole proceedings a real boot in the backside, exactly what it required. He just came in and went 'WANG!'

"We weren't under any particular pressure. I mean, I didn't really have to make any decisions at all until it started getting a bit,..tastier. But it didn't take long before it did. So 'Slow Dancer' and 'Like I've Never Been Gone' were done in about three days. And there were various other takes of other tracks, all sorts of things, and then Cozy went back to Michael Schenker's band and...off on his solo career! Constantly calling up, saying 'When are we going on the road?' "

In this year of megastar-packed Asia blasting to the top of the charts in nothing flat, did he envision anything similar?

"The choices are infinite, really, in this position," he demurred. "But I don't want to work with guys who'd already got reputations, because I thought that each person would have his own ego...and what I wanted was to create an overall atmosphere of my own, using everybody else's talent and their writing ability. I couldn't have done any of it without Robbie...he had a way, a style of writing, that was comfortable. A style of playing, a style of being. But at the same time I had to add my edge, and if I'd've worked with household names, the conflict would have been greater, expectations would have been high from the word go."

...There's nothing particularly profound about me, and...I don't think there ever has been.

Would he tour with the new band?

He laughed. "I dunno,. I can't tour with 45 minutes' worth of material, which is what the album consists of. We've got about five ideas for the next album, already, and I'd like to do that first. And then maybe do Cobo Hall!" he grinned. "I dunno, just have to wait and see. I'd like to extend the lineup, to move it around a bit. Keep the same guys—although, I mean Phil's not gonna be able to be with me, I doubt, he's very busy..."

I wondered if he was aware at all of the deep vein of desperate hope running through the network of Zep fans who kept reunion rumors buzzing despite the lack of news. After all, the Stones slog on after innumerable lineup changes that leave them quite unaffected, like the comings and goings at a multi-national corporation; the Who replace the late Keith Moon with Kenney Jones and carry on, and I doubt if

either band is refusing the substantial money each new generation of kids is shelling out to see "the Stones" or "the Who." Neither 'band suffers as much critical whomping as Zeppelin, either.

"Yeah well speculation I suppose is not a bad thing in a way, but at the same time, we were a four-piece band—always a four-piece band—and we're not a fourpiece band. So we don't tour with anybody else. You don't replace anybody. It's quite straightforward. "

Would he do any writing with Jimmy or John Paul Jones?

"Well I think there's a period of time that's got to elapse where you go to your separate corners. Whatever happens in the future is impossible to see—I mean, you don't know what's going to happen tomorrow, or the next day. So...as much as we are great friends—I mean, we've shared so much—now's not the time to think about it, really."

After all of his pickup band experience, he didn't do any cover versions on the new album...

"No, I think people probably saw when I did that one-up thing with Dave Edmunds, and did the Elvis number, and also with the rhythm and blues band—which was reasonably well-known-ish—people knew that I was doing other people's songs. It would have been almost too easy. But then again, you can't do cover versions, because you've got to justify them. You've got to make them come out and live... beyond what they were in the first place. Which is extremely hard, when you're working on someone else's material. When you're working on your own, you don't exactjy know where you're heading, but you know every time you get a bit farther it's getting close. And it's...new ground, too. So I don't think I'm ready for cover versions yet."

Didn't he cover some Love songs back in the pre-Zep Band of Joy?

"Mm. Moby Grape and Love. Buffalo Springfield...even 'She Has Funny Cars' by the Jefferson Airplane. I used to love that period! I mean, that period, and the New York, the East Coast punk stuff, it was excellent music!"

Had he ever met Arthur Lee?

"I met him once," he nodded. "It was bit overpowering, cause I was just about to go onstage...and I really felt that much of him...it was very hard, with my adrenalin pumping like mad, to do justice to the occasion...But that [Band of Joy] was so long ago...I was just feeling my feet. I'd never written any songs. So...it wasn't until Jimmy and I teamed that I ever started to write, at all."

A good deal of the bitching and moaning about FM radio these days is aimed at the sort of bands who employ a proto-Plantian male voice screaming above a dense, dull mass of guitars and drums. Had he any thoughts about launching such imitators?

"Well, you heard the album. I mean, I don't try to sing like anything, really...I don't particularly go 'Right, I have a technique and I must keep to it.' Otherwise you wouldn't get things like that 'Slow Dancer' track to 'Moonlight in Somosa' which is James Darren meets Fabian, really."

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 35

I had my own pet theory, actually; it seemed to me that for the most part Plant was singing in his own range, whereas the Plantoids were just hauling off and singing falsetto. After all, as heard daily on FM radio, Plant's voice always has a raspy, blues color to it, even in its higher registers, unlike the girlish, fluty sopranos that inundate us in his wake. (And could it have anything to do with body mass... compare the six-foot and then some Plant to the anorectic N. American specimens... perhaps why, also, Plant can get away with preening onstage whereas a—let's face it— uglier male hopeful looks like an ass.) So.. .was he ever singing falsetto?

"No, it doesn't seem so," he mused. "I don't know...my voice has changed quite a lot. I think in the early days, when I used to do those long, sort of incline things— long sort of vocal waaaaahs, I could feel it click in my throat, after I got to a certain point in the song, it'd go click-gliiiiinnnnng! (his voice swoops) But now I don't do that so much, I don't feel it happening, really." He rubbed his head.

"I dunno, it depends what day it is as to how well I sing, or where I sing, or how far it goes. I don't purposely try to sing high, it's just that it's best to choose a key where you have to work to sing, rather than a key where it's just too easy. You can't express yourself, because you haven't got to go lllluuuummmm a little higher. I think, if you sing high, it comes over better on radio, anyway, and on record. If you sing in a low register it kind of gets lost in all the low-mids and bottom end of the record. It's good to keep it up a touch, so that the expression in the voice comes over easier. I found this out just getting involved in the recording, seeing exactly where the voice fits on, on the scope of music."

But what about this FM clone band business—you have the lead voices in Journey, Rush, Billy Squier—Ted Nugent's singers—sounding so similar...

"Yeah, well I can turn on that radio now, it's set to the rock station, and it's all drums and voice, the mix is. All those bands! It's like...in fact, let's just turn it on!" He leaped across the room and punched his "box" on. The radio obliged by blasting out Van Morrison singing "Moondance."

"That's too good," I offered.

"Oh. Yes. Sorry that's swing...courtesy of the Irishman." He punched it off.

"No, it's quite, quite amazing, how there's a certain mix how that goes with this sort of music that's around. And really, they're almost getting exciting, and then it never quite comes off...and then...there seems to be a move to keep a tempo going," he lit a cigarette distractedly, "right the way through it, like that. Like a sort of regular tempo, with the voice sort of going along, and then there's a hook line that comes at the end of, like, every four lines. And it stops, it's almost like a 1960 s type thing, where the last line is without guitar or drums. It's most peculiar that there's a whole format of music that is the AOR thing! And I...I really wasn't quite aware of it until I turned on the radio here. "

It's so technically perfect...

"Yeah," he nodded. "I don't hear anything that's really coming OUT of the speakers and dragging me towards the radio,'and saying it's summertime, the sun's out, everybody's happy, chicks are in short skirts, everybody's optimistic, and this is rock 'n' roil!' It doesn't quite...say that."

"It's refreshing, the middle of it all," he continued, "to hear 'The Ocean' or something like that, a Zeppelin track come WHIZZING out of the speakers and going WAAAAAH. And grabbing you."

None of these other AOR bands seem to have achieved the massive thud that Zeppelin always jolted you with.

"Yeah, Jimmy was the master. Still is.

"Half of it's down to recording on half-inch tape, I think. And putting so much level onto the tape that it's got to either burst the speakers, or it won't...It's actually cut onto plastic, 'cause there's so much level there. I mean, it's so wide, because it's a half-inch tape, you can put so much bottom end on. So much top, and the whole scope of sound is more colorful...rather than the quarter-inch tape, where it won't take it.

"...my record—if I hadn't been 100% proud of it, I wouldn't have gotten anywhere near people to listen to it, because I finished, mixed it, and did everything before anybody heard it. Any record company or anything. I did keep taking tapes to Jimmy and saying 'Well, what do you reckon? Is it gonna be all right?' And he was great! It was obviously a very very emotional thing, when 1 first went to his studio and I put on a rough cassette of a rough mix of 'Slow Dancer'... and that atmosphere came across, out of the tape, through the speakers, and...I dunno, really...I just wanted to hold his hand through it all, and go 'Oh help!"' he laughed.

It's been reported that kids are going to see Death Wish II and playing air guitar during the parts of the soundtrack where Jimmy plays a guitar solo.

"He did a marvelous job," Plant enthused. "I mean, anybody who can watch a screen, see 11 minutes, or 10 seconds of film, and actually write to it... really, it's remarkable the whole thing requires so much...the structuring, if you would, is very remarkable. I know he was very serious about it, he used to start at ten in the morning and finish at midnight... every day! You know, really go for it, writing parts out for orchestras and stuff. He's such a talent, such a remarkable talent. I mean, when he does a solo album, it's gonna be...a real WAH."

If I play the tape of this interview backwards, would there be any secret messages on it?

Robert sputtered. Then laughed. "For cryin'out loud. Ha!"

So what did he think about all that backwards masking hoo ha?

"I think that some people have got too much time on their hands," he barked. "I mean, they'd even play the World Cup backwards...you know, England versus somebody or another and retrace the history of the English race, who knows? I dunno...it's 'utter poppycock' as. TerryThomas would say."

What about his lyrics on the new album...

"Nothing profound there at all, mostly boy and girl situations," he said.

Typically, he played innocent when I tried to delve into his poetic influences. Shelley who? He grinned devilishly. "Percy...I just browsed through some Shelley books people sent me...but I like easy, easy reading. The Book of Lists is a good one!

"You know, there's nothing particularly profound about me, and I don't think there ever—sounds a bit lame, but—I don't think there ever has been. I just love to sing. It's simple. Most people love to do one thing. Well I'm lucky, because I love to do. ..one or two things. I don't really—should not really—attract a great deal of interest for anything except for what is on vinyl."

In the past, people would talk about his lyrics in terms of '6Qs—

"Flower child."'

Yeah.

"Well that's why this album is good and fresh and healthy for me because I think it dispels that whole thought, because I was putting out ideas for the actual construction of the music...you know, producing it, going for it on every angle. And it's not wishy-washy. It's not soft. It has that intensity, which people probably didn't reckon I contributed in the past. So it's a good shop window for my...trade, if you like. I'm not a flower child or anything like that...whatever it was."

Did he think there was a certain magic in the '60s, a greater optimism?

"Yeah, I think there was a great optimism. It was like, a light at the end of the tunnel. I think there still is, really. On a good day. So, if that be the crime, then I stand guilty."

Was he still an optimist?

He fell quiet for a minute. "Mm. Surprisingly enough, yes. If I was dirge-y, I wouldn't do interviews, I'd just make records and hide.

OK, clear us up once and for all on the XYZ Band hype...

"XYZ Band." He took a breath. "Most I knew about it was somebody sent me a ballpoint pen from America to England, claiming 'Alan White, Chris Squire, Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones.' And the relevant thing about the whole thing is that the ballpoint pen didn't work! The ink had flooded on the way over!" He was beside himself, laughing.

People over here really swallowed that stuff hook, line and sinker. And the ticket agency in New Jersey that advertised a fall American Led Zeppelin tour...

"I heard about it, it's crazy," he replied. "Well, I don't know if it's good for anybody, I mean...do people really want to see that, do they want to believe that that is still gonna keep going? I don't think so, I mean, things have to go on, don't they? And we weren't gonna carry on without Bonham, so—this is what it's all about. And if it's a disappointment, if my contribution to the present and the future is a disappointment, it's the best I can do. And it ain't that bad at all." @