Robert Plant is Not Ready to Retire: “I’ve Got Something to Say.”
Retirement isn’t on Robert Plant‘s radar. Along with revealing a North American tour with Alison Krauss during Summer 2024 and another series of UK headlining dates with his band Saving Grace, Plant said he still has more to do and hinted at the possibility of new solo music. Since releasing “Raise the Roof,” his second collaborative album with Krauss, in 2021, along with his 11th solo album, “Carry Fire,” in 2017 Plant said he has been revisiting music he’s had archived away. Along with his 2024 touring schedule and sifting through unreleased material, Plant, 75, said retirement isn’t an option for him. “The camaraderie, the things that you share up there, and the frailties that you know you’re carrying with you quietly, the exposure of yourself to yourself, is something that I would hate to say goodbye to,” said Plant. “I can’t just sit back. Out there in the real world, people say to me, ‘What about the book?’ And I say, ‘Are you kidding? What? This is spectacular. Why think about it twice?’”
Plant added, “This is today. What happened in Schenectady in 1969 is another story. And for me, the continuum must keep going. Today, I was pulling all my lyric books out and going, ‘Gotta get the groove back. I’ve got something to say.’ So yeah, I’m going to keep going—as long as they’ve got effects machines that make me sound good [laughs]. Well, it worked for Elvis [Presley]. Listen to the compression on his voice on some of those big ballads in ’57.”
In October 2023, Plant performed three Led Zeppelin songs as a guest performer during a benefit concert at the Soho Farmhouse in Oxfordshire, England for The Cancer Platform, an initiative launched by the Cancer Awareness Trust.
Plant’s set included “Stairway to Heaven,” which he hadn’t performed in 16 years.
“It was cathartic,” said Plant about performing the 1971 Zeppelin classic. “People go, ‘Oh, that’s good. He never was going to do that.’ But I didn’t really do it. I just blurted it out, ’cause it’s such an important song to me for where I was at the time and where I was with Jimmy [Page] and with John [Paul Jones] and Bonzo.
"The scene of Page and Plant together on stage with Plant contorting wildly and Page playing down about his knees was a memorable one. Plant, wearing the tightest pants imaginable with crotch bulging and blond hair extending about two feet, was prone to committing every conceivable act that represented the functioning of any and all sexual acts. These hysterics were committed independent of whether he was singing at the moment."
- From the Nov. 1, 1969 Syracuse concert review (Ithacan)
"It is apparent that Zeppelin lead singer Robert Plant deserves his growing reputation as the most sexually exciting personality in rock. But he deserves more. Plant is more musician than he is pretty goldilocks rock and roll star. He has the guts to get into a blues like 'Bring It on Home' and the range and musical sense to do something with it. Additionally, there is the Robert Plant howl. It starts in the airless womb of an electron tube, lodges itself in the main columns of the building, is conducted to bedrock and is now entombed in eternal torment in the interior of the Appalachain range."
- From the April 2, 1970 Charleston concert review by Ray Brack