Robert Plant, un lion parmi les zèbres*

À 18 ans, il commençait sa carrière avec Led Zeppelin. À 21 ans, une génération entière l'adulait. Né pour être un monstre sacré du rock, Robert Plant est devenu cette vedette que l'on plaît à adorer ou à détester. Sa voix stridente, rappelant souvent les intonations de Big Mama Thornton, est restée à jamais une marque de commerce inégalée jusqu'à présent dans la mémoire collective de millions de fans et dans les annales de la musique rock .

LA PETITE HISTOIRE DE ROBERT PLANT

Robert Anthony Plant est né le 20 août 1948 en Grande-bretagne. Dès l'adolescence il tombe dans la marmite du rock et du blues, surtout le blues, une musique qui l'influencera toujours.

Au début, son père l'encourage à jouer de la musique, à condition bien sûr que notre Robert poursuive ses études. Son père va même défrayer les coûts de location d'une salle de répétitions pour son fils et ses amis. De son côté, Robert accepte de poursuivre ses études en choisissant la comptabilité comme profession. Mais sa passion trop forte pour la musique, sans compter sa longue chevelure vont exaspérer son père au point qu'il mettra un terme à l'aide financière. Plant répond par la bouche de ses canons: il abandonne ses études en comptabilité, et laisse pousser ses cheveux beaucoup plus longs !

Il formera plusieurs petits groupes tels Delta Blues Band et Band of Joy, joindra un temps les Crawling King Snakes. Notamment, il endisquera avec CBS en 1968 quelques simples sous le nom "Listen". Mais c'est avec Band of Joy que l'embryon Led Zeppelin prend forme. On retrouvait déjà la quasi totalité de la formation légendaire: Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Bohnam et l'ineffable Peter Grant.

Mais Band of Joy n'était pas une fin en soi. Un certain temps, Plant et Page vont se retrouver dans un groupe inconnu, Hobbsweedle, groupe dans lequel le duo commencera à réfléchir à l'idée d'un nouveau groupe, avec une musique différente de tout ce qu'ils avaient fait jusqu'à présent. Avec la rencontre de John-Paul Jones, et Peter Grant comme gérant, plus rien ne pouvait arrêter ce qui devait arriver.

LED ZEPPELIN

Puis l'aventure Led Zeppelin commence à la fin des années 1960. Anecdote: au début on voulait baptiser le groupe "The New Yardbirds". Mais c'était un nom associé déjà à Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page et Jeff Beck. Le choix s'arrêta sur Led Zeppelin. Le nom vient de l'idée de Keith Moon (The Who) pour un nom de groupe qu'il aurait appelé "going down like a Lead Zeppelin".

Très rapidement, Plant est vertement pris à parti par les pharisiens de la critique musicale. On lui reproche le fait qu'il n'a aucun sens du "timing", chantant quand il le voulait, à n'importe quel moment d'une pièce. Mais c'est justement cette absence de coordination qui va faire de Robert Plant un chanteur spécial. Et son public adore ça !

Robert Plant devient rapidement l'idole d'une génération. Ouvertement il parle de choses contestées et contestables: légalisation de la marijuana, rites celtiques, magies blanche et noire, prend position contre la guerre du Viet-Nam, se déclare un partisan inconditionnel du "sex, drug and rock'n roll". Autant de déclarations ne sont pas sans créées des conditions matérielles propices à l'éclosion de problèmes inattendus...

En août 1975, à l'occasion d'un voyage en Grèce, Robert Plant et sa femme Maureen seront au coeur d'un violent accident de voiture qui forcera Robert à la chaise roulante pendant quelques semaines. Mais les malheurs ne s'arrêtent pas là.

Quelques mois après le tournage du film The Song Remains the Same (fin 1976), son fils Karac décède subitement des suites d'une infection virale.

Les événements affectent Robert Plant, mais en même temps le font grandir au plan spirituel. Les drogues, l'alcool, les turpitudes des tournées sans fin vont connaître une fin. Malheureusement, John Bohnam, le légendaire batteur du groupe n'ayant pas pigé la leçon décèdera dans ses propres vomissures suite à une beuverie à la résidence de Jimmy Page. C'était la fin de Led Zeppelin et le début d'un temps nouveau pour Plant.

L'APRÈS-LED ZEPPELIN: LES ANNÉES 1980

Dans la tourmente des changements, Robert Plant forme avec son ami et guitariste Robbie Blunt un groupe de R&B nommé Honeydrippers (1981). Un groupe qui verra passé des musiciens aussi prestigieux que Paul Martinez à la basse, Jeff Woodroffe aux claviers ainsi que Phil Collins et Cozy Powell à la batterie. C'était plus un "trip" de musiciens qu'une réelle aventure musicale. Le temps de se décontracter quoi !

Puis Robert Plant décide de produire son premier album solo Pictures at Eleven (1982). L'album va connaître un succès au plan commercial. Quelques vidéos aidant à la promotion de l'album (Like I've Never Been Gone).

En novembre 1982 un album post-script de Led Zeppelin Coda fait sa sortie. Contrairement à ce qu'on pourrait penser, l'album est quelque peu boudé par les inconditionnels de Led Zeppelin. C'est là que Robert Plant réalise qu'il est temps d'en finir avec l'image Led Zeppelin et tenter de nouvelles expériences musicales.

The Principles of Moment, sorti en 1983, amorce un changement musical majeur dans la carrière de Plant. Comme sur le premier album, Phil Collins accepte de participer à son enregistrement. On retiendra le grand succès Big Log, une pièce qui fera parti du top 20 des charts britannique et américain.

En 1984, il remet en scelle les Honeydrippers pour la sortie de l'album Volume One. L'album se vend très bien en Amérique du Nord. Le slow Sea of Love connaît un gros succès dans les boîtes de nuit.

Plant est toujours animé par l'idée de tenter de nouvelles expériences musicales. L'album Shaken 'n' Stirred (1985) est probablement l'album le plus téméraire en frais d'expérience musicale. Hormis la pièce Little by Little, l'album est incompris. Il reste à mon avis un des meilleurs albums de Plant, si ce n'est que pour son audace.

À l'occasion du Live Aid en juillet 1985 Robert Plant retrouve sur scène ses vieux acolytes Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, de même que Phil Collins. Les rumeurs vont bon train: on chuchote de reformer Led Zeppelin...Mais cela n'arrivera pas.

Plutôt, Plant choisi de reprendre du service en ajoutant un autre album à son palmarès, un album que d'aucun qualifieront de "zeppelinien": Now and Zen. Jimmy Page acceptera d'accompagner Plant sur certaines pièces de l'album. L'album est un véritable succès. Coca Cola achètera les droits d'exploitation de la pièce Tall Cool One.

Pendant longtemps, Plant refusait de chanter des pièces de Led Zeppelin en spectacle. Mais Now and Zen est apparu comme un exorcisme auprès de Plant. Il a été libéré de Zeppelin, et recommence à chanter des pièces du légendaire groupe sans aucun problème. Les foules en redemandent à l'occasion de la tournée mondiale 1987-1988.

LES ANNÉES 1990

Les années 1990 vont voir la sortie de deux excellents albums. D'abord Manic Nirvana (1990), un album qui prend son nom de l'épithète affublé à Plant par son entourage. Les critiques sont sévères. Pourtant, c'est un des bons albums rocks que j'aie entendu dans les années 1990. Mais enfin ! Puis en 1993 c'est Fate Of Nations. Un album qui suit la logique Now and Zen, c'est-à-dire l'énergie musicale retrouvée du temps de Led Zep assortie de textes à double sens qui sont caractéristiques de la plume de Robert Plant. Les pièces 29 Palms et If I were a Carpenter atteindront le top 50 du billboard. Une tournée mondiale amènera Robert Plant en Amérique du sud (1994) où une nouvelle génération de supporters ont découvert le vieux lions du rock.

Le duo Page/Plant fera parlé bien des gens au sujet d'une éventuelle reformation du groupe Led Zeppelin. En 1994, MTV approche le duo pour la série Unplugged. La sortie de No Quarter relance la frénésie des vieux supporters. Un excellent album, où le mariage des influences orientales avec la mandoline nous donne des pièces d'une rare ingéniosité comme la reprise de Kashmir, ou encore Thank You, The Battle of Evermore et Gallows Pole.

En 1995, l'album Encomium, un album hommage à Led Zeppelin laisse la voix à des artistes comme Sheryl Crow et Tori Amos.

Depuis 1999, Plant a formé un nouveau groupe Priory of Brion. Le groupe consacre ses influences musicales à Arthur Lee, Van Morrison, Buffalo Springfield, sans compter James Brown.

Il y aurait encore tellement de choses à dire.... Mais je dois retirer mes doigts du clavier car il commence à faire mal !

Stéphane Boutin

*Je fais référence à cette entrevue qu'accordait Robert Plant en 1976:

"Lion Among Zebras" Robert Plant Interview - 1976

Some corporation was holding its convention at

the Beverly Hilton and amidst a sea of striped

sports jackets, Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant seem-

ed incongruous as he strode across the lobby,

a long-maned lion stalking through a herd of zebras.

It was half past five o'clock, about one hour before

better than half the televisions in the world would be

tuned in to the spectacle of Muhammad Ali giving British

heavyweight contender Richard Dunn a blood-spattered

five-round drubbing in Munich, Germany. Plant pried

open the glass sliding door of his room and coolly but

politely ordered two young friends to leave. Outside, the

sun still bounced brilliantly off the swimming pool but

in the room its light was effectively blocked by the kind

of thick, rubberized drapes that must have been invented

by either an insomniac or a vampire. "Do you think we

can get this done before the fight begins?" he asked, his

eyes darting over toward the room's TV. No, he wasn't

all that much into boxing, but watching Clay is another

matter, said Plant, whose enthusiasm for other sports

‹particularly soccer‹is well known. Clay? "Clay, Ali,

whatever you want to call him."

He sat down on a severely rumpled king-sized bed

above which a poster advertising the film "Tunnel Vision"

had been haphazardly tacked on the wall and, reaching

for the telephone, ordered a couple of daiquiris from room

service. As we began the interview, Led Zep's golden boy

addressed the tape recorder as if he were facing a bat-

tery of network cameras, instead of a lone disheveled

journalist sprawled on a hotel floor.

Circus: When you came over to the States on your

first tour, how readily did you find the band to be ac-

cepted by the audience ? Was it an anonymous grind at

first?

Plant: No, because Atlantic had done a good job with

the white label copies of the first album, getting them

out to the FM stations a couple of days before we got

to town. The reaction was very good. We weren't even

billed the majority of the time. I remember the marquee

that read 'Vanilla Fudge, Taj Mahal plus Supporting Act.'

I didn't care; I'd been playing for years and I'd never

seen my name up there so it meant nothing to me. But

the reception that we got was something else again, and

that was especially surprising because in some of those

towns the albums had not yet reached the stores. Even

so, after about the third number you could feel that the

buzz coming back to us from the audience was different

than what they'd given the other bands. The first gig

was the day after Christmas in Denver and then we came

back here to Whisky, where Jimmy and I were both

chronically ill and only played one gig out of three we

were supposed to have played. And I saw the GTO's and

I saw everything buzzing around me. I saw the Plaster-

Casters, and I saw rows and rows and rows of possibili-

ties, you know? And I said, "Man, there's no end." The

day will never come when I stop looking at‹what did

Joni Mitchell call her album, Miles of Aisles? Just as

long as you can look out there and get a twinkle. So that

was it, that was the first tour. By the time we got to the

East Coast, it was really hot. It was really surprising;

it just devastated me. The antics, the tricks and just. the

whole world that I'd slipped into, after having to struggle

back in the midlands of England just to play. And sud-

denly we were in places like Steve Paul's Scene, where

the mini-Mafia would be kicking the tables over and

chicks would be sleezing up to you and everything like

that I mean, why stop ever?

Circus: When did you first get really caught up in

writing for the band?

Plant: It was with the second album, when I got into

doing "Ramble On," which a lot of people say is a sort

of Lord of The Rings type of thing. By then I had devel-

oped a wanderlust and that song was really just a

reflection of myself.

Circus: Was that the first writing you had done ?

Plant: I wrote one song with the Band of Joy called

"Memory Lane." It was really quite funny, something

about a chick on the back of a motorbike with a chrome

horse between her legs. I suppose it was an early version

of "The Wanton Song." But I've never considered writing

to be a problem; I've always looked forward to it, it's

just that sometimes it becomes a challenge. I usually

just leave the phone off the hook, send the flesh on its

way and shut the door tightly. "The Song Remains The

Same" is possibly one of the few songs that I don't think

I really did justice to.

Circus: Your last album was recorded in 18 days. Why

was it done so quickly?

Plant: It was really like a cry of survival. I didn't

know whether I was going to be able to work with the

band again; I didn't know if my leg would heal. We had

planned to do a world tour, but obviously that was nipped

in the ankle, so to speak. I was stuck in Malibu for a

long while, and I said "Please, let me do something to

do with music; let me do something or otherwise I'm

gonna go balmy." We already had some ammunition from

our trip to Morocco‹Jimmy and I had put together some

epic sort of material‹but every time that we started

listening and thinking about the ideas that we already

had put together, we shied away. We hadn't been back

to England in nine or ten months, and consequently I

don't think that we were in one of our more mentally

stable periods not in a condition that enabled us to come

to grips with what would be a huge accomplishment in

our eyes. So we went to S.I.R. [Studio Instrument Rentals

‹a complex of rehearsal facilities] to work on some

things. And it was hard in the beginning- I had to sit in

an arm chair with my leg up in the air while the band

was on the stage. And I'd go into another room where

Detective were playing and Michael Des Barres was

singing, aping all of my movements and looking in the

mirror at the same time.

Circus: Did he make any cracks?

Plant: Nah, I was making the cracks.

Circus: So you signed him to Swan Song Records.

Plant: Sure, we figured that if I don't go out on the

road again, we'd just change his name quickly and send

him out as me. But anyway, slowly and painfully we

began working on the album and it gradually came to-

gether. And then we went straight to Germany; that was

where we did the 18-day shuffle. We worked pretty much

straight through. We didn't‹or at least I didn't‹go out

at all at night. Normally after hard work we always take

our rewards; but that time there were no rewards for

Robert.

Circus: What do you think of Presence in terms of its

musical accomplishments ?

Plant: Well, there won't be another album like it, put

it like that. It was an album of circumstances; it was a

cry from the depths, the only thing that we could do. I

honestly didn't know what was going to happen and

neither did anybody else. If it had been six, seven or

eight years ago, it would probably have been a good

deal more raw. It was taken from the balls, you know;

that was where it was coming from.

Circus: How about the film that's about to be released?

Were you very actively involved with it?

Plant: Everybody was. We knew exactly how we wanted

it, I mean, we knew the material so we knew just what

should be illuminated at what point of the film. So all of

us were equally involved with it‹there was no other way

to do it, because we couldn't leave it to anybody else.

It was a big thing for us to do, and I don't think you

do it more than once.

Circus: Do you enjoy working with film?

Plant: Film people really puzzle me. I believe that mu-

sic is the master; that is, it can bring you elation and

sadness and satisfaction while the visual part of film is

just the diversion. The attitude and antics of the people

involved with film, the way they follow their own odd

trips are really beyond my comprehension altogether. I

could never imagine being involved in movies by myself.

If I had to repeat the work on that film again, I would

refuse to do it.

Circus: You would never be interested in doing any

acting ?

Plant: No, not at all. I don't premeditate how I act or

react or motivate myself onstage. I know what to do, but

I don't know when to switch what on; it's just a case of

how I'm driven on by the people who are with me. If

I weren't with the other three gentlemen in the band,

I probably wouldn't be worth interviewing. Whereas the

idea of the solitary man standing in front of the camera

repeating himself time and time again to some irate

lunatic sitting in a chair with "Director" written in back

‹yecch, no thanks.

Circus: What were your travels in Morocco all about?

Plant: Well, I'd been there before with my wife Maur-

een and I'd started to touch beyond the usual clip-cloppity

"This way mister, this way mister" kinds of places. I went

back with Maureen directly after the Earl's Court gigs,

which were the last gigs before the accident. I went

straight off the beaten track. I'd had three days lying in

the sun in a glossy hotel and then we just took a car

and went. I had one friend in Morocco- he was a friend

of the infamous Harold, who hangs around with us and

a few other bands occasionally. As it happened, this

Moroccan guy had spent 11 years learning the Koran to

be a holy man but he turned out to be a hustler instead.

He'd been to London and so he was a big deal locally,

and he'd do things like get hold of a telephone in the

Hilton hotel, cut the cord, and put it in his car‹so he'd

be driving around Marrakesh pretending that he was

talking on the telephone. A real gassy guy, always trying

to sell you things even though he was your friend. It was

with him that we went down to the Sahara.

Circus: Jimmy Page was along for some of that trip.

Do you imagine that his music would be affected by it?

Plant: I'd imagine so. It doesn't manifest itself as a

direct emulation of their music, but when you've seen it

and felt it, it has an effect on you, just like a car accident

has its effects too. Everything washes off on you, although

some things aren't so immediately apparent as other

things But I don't think Morocco is the most inspiring

place that I shall ever go to. It's my ambition to go to

Kashmir, and I'm saving that as the last trek. What I

want to do is to travel north from India, but not singing

Hari Krishna or anything like that. My old lady comes

from India, and her uncle was chief of the Calcutta

mounted police during the '40s. He can speak about 10

different dialects and he's a really great guy. In fact one

of the times that I worked before the Zeppelin days, I had

a job as a production control manager in a factory that

he ran. I got the sack because I ordered enough steel to

keep three factories going for about a year, but I man-

aged to remain his friend and one day I'd like to take

him with me and go right up through Kashmir and then

stop. Then I'd like to just disappear for about four or five

years. It's not a Marco Polo trip, it's just that

I know that you can mingle; I know people who have

lived in those places for a long time. Of course it's not

wine and roses or even the spiritual aspect of life there

that I'm interested in It's day to day experiences, and

you have to work because as you work you become a part

of society. There's so much to learn there, so much that

we here in the West have lost.

Circus: Do you think you would be accepted into Kash-

miri society?

Plant: I think so. I have a lot of friends in England

who have done a lot of traveling over there. A guy who

currently works for me escaped the police by virtually

walking to Bombay from England; he just hitched and

went and went and went. He'd take buses here and there

and catch rides wherever he was able. He slept in caves

in Hindu-Kush, came out covered with these big flies

and had to jump in a ditch full of shit to get the flies

off him. I mean, he just had the most amazing time;

life and death in the palm of his hand. He had to play

games with the guards on the borders of India and Paki-

stan, where the borders close at six o'clock and there's

nobody who's going to take any responsibility for your

safety when you go through. There's that excitement, a

little less of the expected if you compare it to going to

Philadelphia, for example, and getting your rocks off.

It's just my ambition to see if I can do it, to see if I've

got it inside me to live with those people. I noticed when

I was in India that just because we admired the people

there, they looked upon us as idiots. Because they're

scratching to get into Western society, and we were just

trying to touch upon the pulse of the very things they

were trying to leave behind. But I shall still go to the

Roxy tonight, I haven't yet given up that part of my

life. But the time will come when I will do that. And

without a four-wheel drive vehicle, too. And no stimu-

lants.

Circus: Don't you expect that it will be difficult to

give up all those things ?

Plant: I'll not give them up forever, I'll just soak it in

and come back. Everybody will think I'm a complete

loony by the time I return I've already declared myself

this week as the Billy Graham of rock; I'm trying to

clean up rock & roll for a week. But who knows what

could happen up there after four years in the wilderness?

Circus: So what is it that you'll do when you get back

from Kashmir?

Plant: Uh, become a Mormon.

Circus: Well, with the money you've made, they'll

probably let you in.

Plant: All what money? You've gotta be kidding.