Credit: Robert Plant
Fri 25 September 2026 18:30, UK
There was no real preparation for what Led Zeppelin was going to do once they reached the big time.
Everyone else was still reeling from what bands like The Beatles had done, but by the end of the 1960s, Zeppelin had become one of the few to garner more excitement out of their fans, at least on the live stage. But for all of the great stage moves that Robert Plant perfected, he felt that there were only a few tunes from the 1960s that truly spoke to him.
Then again, a lot of what he did had more to do with the old bluesmen who had come before him. He was still the idyllic hippy when he was working in The Band of Joy, but his true calling was working in the blues scene that Jimmy Page had made his own when working with The Yardbirds before Zeppelin formed. And when Plant got the call, he knew that he could find someone better for the job.
He had already done his best Steve Winwood impression on the band’s debut record, and while the band were dangerously close to drafting in Terry Reid as their vocalist, the reason Plant worked so well is that he knew his shit. He was able to reference every one of those early blues tunes in his songs, and while some of them weren’t exactly hidden whenever he sang, he had the good sense of paying tribute to his idols and giving them credit on the album sleeve.
But even if the British blues scene was becoming prevalent around that time, the British invasion bands weren’t exactly doing the same thing earlier in the decade. The closest that the country came to having a truly bluesy act was The Rolling Stones, but was anyone looking at an album like Their Satanic Majesties Request and claiming that they were making the best blues rock and roll that anyone ever heard?
They had gone far past that, but Plant could still find some great stuff out there. Because aside from the more innocent takes on the blues that other bands were doing around the same time, there was something about Eric Burdon’s voice on The Animals’ ‘I’m Crying’ that spoke to him a lot more than what the traditional pop rock bands were doing around that time.
With no disrespect to the rest of the groups, Burdon was one of the most manly voices to ever appear on the charts. He was still bellowing when he was singing tunes like ‘House of the Rising Sun’, but whereas people could latch onto the boyish charm of Paul McCartney or even the lovable punk of Mick Jagger, Burdon left nothing to the imagination whenever he sang.
Further reading: From The Vault
He was younger than most of his contemporaries at the time, but he was already a hardened grown man, and Plant seemed to take that same energy into his own playing. Those high notes in Zeppelin’s music might be hard to pull off, but when you listen to him hit them, none of them exactly sound like they’re too effeminate by any stretch. This was the sound of a frontman fully unencumbered when he sang, and a lot of that came from the authority that someone like Burdon had when he took a turn on the microphone.
Not every note had to be the catchiest thing in the world, but Plant could see what could happen when you put a little more power into everything that you did. Burdon was the next phase of rock and roll frontman, and Plant was doing everything that he could to make sure that his records could sound half as dangerous as The Animals when he delivered some of those massive screams.
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