Robert Plant said he once told Alison Krauss that he felt “embarrassed” about Led Zeppelin's song “The Battle of Evermore,” and she offered him a different perspective on it.
In a new interview with Rolling Stone, he laughed about having involved “one or two too many, well, hobbits” in some of his early lyrics, but said that his lifelong fascination with the characters' creator, J.R.R. Tolkien, continued to this day.
“I was living in a dream then, talking about C.S. Lewis and Tolkien,” Plant said of his younger years. “And of course, it brings hoops of derision into everybody who picked up a guitar or got near a microphone by 1980. But I was a kid. I was 22 when I wrote ‘Ramble On’ with Jimmy [Page], so what do I know?”
He added that he knows "a lot more about Tolkien now. … ‘The Battle of Evermore’ is not over. Far from it. And the thing about ‘Evermore’ is, I said to Alison, ‘I’m embarrassed by this.’ She said, ‘But you can’t be embarrassed, because it’s a young person’s moments [of] living in an area which is like that, which resonates that period.”
He described her observation as “oblique,” explaining, “that period is right now, too. It’s all the same thing. It’s just that I was obsessed by Louis Spence and C.S. Lewis and … the people that used to meet with Tolkien in Oxford and try and wish that they could revive the spirit of what had happened at the turn of the 20th century. ‘Bring it back. Bring it back.’”
Listen to Led Zeppelin’s ‘Battle of Evermore’
Plant went on to discuss his feelings for the signature Zeppelin song “Stairway to Heaven” more than five decades after completing it. He recalled his bandmates had been “really, really proud” of what they recorded. "They gave it to me and said, ‘What are you going to do about this?’ So I set about trying to write something … where there’s some optimism and reflection from someone who was really not [old]," he explained. "I was 23 or something like that. ... And so what do I think now? When I hear it in isolation, I feel overwhelmed for every single reason you could imagine.”
Setting the ‘70s backdrop, he added that "there was a mood and an air of trying to make it through. Everybody was reeling from Vietnam and the usual extra helping of corruption with politics. There were people who were really eloquent who brought it home far less pictorially and did a much better job of reaching that point. But I am what I am, and as my grandfather said, ‘I can’t be more ‘am’-erer.’”
Robert Plant Albums Ranked
Crafting a solo career has been something of a quest for Led Zeppelin's former frontman.
Has it really been 15 years since Robert
Plant and Alison Krauss barnstormed Americana music? It doesn't feel like it. Last year, Nashville's favorite harmonizing odd couple reunited for "Raise The Roof," the duo's first album since making waves
with 2007's bar-setting collaboration "Raising Sand." Now, they're singing coast-to-coast on a collaborative tour celebrating the new collection of reimagined cover songs. And it's no spoiler to say: They're having a blast along the way. "We're ripping it up at times," Plant said in a news Tennessean interview. "You can hear a pin drop at times. You can create absolute still air on stage. And at other times it's roaring. We're both at home with that." The duo stops Sept. 7 at FirstBank Amphitheater near Franklin, roughly 30 miles south of Nashville. Read on for highlights from a lighthearted interview with Plant and Krauss ahead of the two returning to Middle Tennessee.
'Raise the Roof': Robert Plant and Alison Krauss on surprise reunion, new album: 'It felt like we never left'
On singing together again
Plant, a rock 'n' roll legend, and Krauss, a bluegrass torchbearer, returned to local studio Sound Emporium with producer T. Bone Burnett to catch lightning in a proverbial bottle for a second time.
They sang new takes on songs from influential duo The Everly Brothers, country legend Merle Haggard and Scottish folk singer Bert Jansch, among others.
They'll likely bring some of those songs — plus reinvented takes on Led Zeppelin, of course — to the Williamson County rock quarry venue next week.
After nearly a decade-and-a-half apart, Plant said he missed being "in real vivid partnership, vocally." The two shared occasional songs in the years apart before reuniting in early 2020 to track "Raise The Roof."
"I missed the challenge of the whole deal of singing alongside somebody ...," Plant said. "I spent five or six years prior to this at the front end of a powerful, trippy group [the Sensational Space Shifters]. I couldn't want to eventually bring all my responsibilities and [that] program to a finale and get into this group."
On the duo's formation and eventual encore, Krauss added: "The whole thing was such a surprise. We went in with such an attitude of like, 'Let's see what happens.' We really had a great time and it sounded beautiful. ... When we went back in the studio, it was so nice. It didn't feel different at all."
Bonnaroo 2022: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss don't miss a beat, 14 years later
On sharing the stage
Now, they're sharing stages together again after each spent years fronting must-see acts — Plant as a solo artist of late and Krauss leading award-winning Union Station.
"We do a lot of eyeballing," Plant said. "Every night we're both waiting for moments yet to come. [Like] in the back of our minds we're going to do something really crazy. The harmony's going to go out the window and we'll go into some extraordinary appreciation of an airplane."
Is there a signal when things could get interesting? Nope, Krauss said with a laugh.
"No matter how he signals, you cannot prepare," she said moments before they ribbed each other about "professionalism" on stage.
Plant piled on, "Sometimes I think to myself, what did I do before I did this? There's a lot of anticipation that a guy who's 74 years old is going to turn into a sort-of screaming Jay Hawkins at the drop of a hat."
On making Plant & Krauss a trilogy
Can listeners expect a second encore from the duo?
"You know, talk is cheap," Plant said. "Maybe when we get to the end of it, we'll have to take a break for a while. Maybe we should travel together ... [and] we could just talk about music forever and ever."
For now, they'll settle for treating audiences to a collaboration most didn't see coming once — let alone twice.
Or, as Krauss said, "[the shows] are just so happy. So happy."
If you go
- Who: Robert Plant and Alison Krauss with JD McPherson
- When: 8 p.m. Sept. 7
- Where: FirstBank Amphitheater, 4525 Graystone Quarry Lane in Franklin
- Tickets: $39 and up before fees via ticketmaster.com
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