Robert Plant

Rolling Stone Magazine 5 October 2017

I saw Robert Plant a couple of years ago in Chicago. I have been a fan of Led Zepplin since I was 12 or 13 years old. I had older neighbor girls who I spent a summer with before I started high school. Both of their parents worked, so we spent the whole of that summer listening to albums on their excellent turntable. It was there that I was introduced to rock music: Zeppelin, the Who, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, and the rest of the 70's greats. I should say that the one band that made the biggest impression on me that they introduced me to was the Beatles, but that is for another time.

One moment that always comes back to me is the one morning that I walked over in my shorts and t-shirt and Zeppelin's Immigrant Song was at high volume as I approached their screen door. Oh, the sound of it was ... haunting and seemed to come from a far away place where I needed to be. We were deep enough into the seventies that Zeppelin didn't tour very much, but the girls took me to a couple of Super Bowl of Rock events at Soldier Field where I saw Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Frampton during his Comes Alive tour, and Black Sabbath .. among others.

A few years back, I started to hang out with another set of friends who brought Zeppelin back into my orbit, and I saw the film The Song Remains the Same for the first time. Not 13 anymore, I had a new appreciation for the band, especially Robert Plant. Man oh man. Long before boy bands and accessible kind of girly singers like, oh, I don't now ... Bieber in his young years or a Harry Styles, who were/are cute, but aren't going to do anyone any harm in their masculine prowess. Ah, but Robert Plant ... he may have been wearing a girly, chiffon top in the scenes from the Madison Square Garden concert that is played during the film, but he is a hot, sexually provocative M-A-N. I didn't even see it at 13, but the age I am now .... WOWSA.

So there I am on the lakefront in Chicago to see Mr. Sex, and I was thrilled when he sang Zep. The rest of it? I could do without. He's a tease. And he barks about not going back to the band, and I say nuts to that. If we have to put up with ... oh, the hundred of other acts who should have retired long ago and save themselves the trouble of being has been'd, I think that Plant and Page could still be giving us the opportunity to transcend.

'Tis a pity he's a ... whore, is the Bowie song, but, in this case, he's the anti-whore. And I would like him a little more dirty.