We approach the end of the 1960s, and every rock vocalist in London is either in another band or pursuing a solo career. The decade had been a who’s who of innovation, as The Beatles’ experimental approach to some of their latter albums opened up the charts to a range of different styles of music. It felt like anybody could become a rock star, and with that mindset, everyone was trying to become a rock star.
Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones had decided they would start a band together, but they were struggling to find a singer who would be able to perform in the style they wanted. It wasn’t until they were pointed in the direction of Birmingham and told about a long-haired, versatile vocalist who might be able to give the band a helping hand.
The singer in question was Robert Plant, who was performing in multiple bands around the Midlands and trying to break into the music industry. He was struggling at the time, and so when the opportunity to join Led Zeppelin came about, he gave himself a pretty strict ultimatum, as he told himself he would stop performing entirely if this wasn’t the band that made it.
“I decided that if I didn’t get anywhere by the time I was twenty, I would pack it in,” said Plant when discussing his attitude prior to joining Led Zeppelin. He was determined to make it work with this band, and you can hear that determination in his vocals throughout those early Zeppelin albums. He doesn’t seem to have an off switch, as he approaches every song with an unrelenting vigour, dominating every word and exaggerating each sentence.
I, along with a lot of people, listen to these early Zeppelin albums with a wide-eyed (or eared) excitement. Plant really doesn’t hold anything back with the way he sings, and it makes for some truly mind-blowing vocal performances. However, while fans might enjoy this early Zeppelin work, Plant listens back to it and sings. What we see as determination and grit, he sees as over-the-top manliness compensating, screaming and hollering instead of actually singing.
“I was shouting too much on the first album,” he said, “I stopped shouting a little bit by the second album. By the third one, I finally learned how to sing.
Plant says that it wasn’t until the third album that he stopped screaming and started singing. The band went for a much more stripped-back approach to their music, leaning heavily into acoustic music. This meant that Plant couldn’t just scream on every song and instead had to approach songs with a sweet-sounding serenity. To this day, he looks back fondly on the creation of Led Zeppelin III, as that was the album when he first forced himself to sing.
“We did things quickly and were serious about making something pretty as well as powerful,” Plant admitted, “The outro of ‘Gallows Pole’ is great, with all the manic singing I’d overcooked horrendously prior to that. It started having some meaning. I was learning how to syncopate. I was flourishing.
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