Robert Plant “Finally Learned How To Sing” on the Led Zeppelin album
He continues to be scathingly critical of his early work. One of rock’s most iconic frontmen, Robert Plant is also a harsh critic of himself. Generations of copyists were enthralled with Led Zeppelin’s blues rock bombast as they swept the globe. The vocalist, however, maintains a lovely sense of distance from everything, even going so far as to call one release the day he “finally learned how to sing.”
According to the new documentary Becoming Led Zeppelin, the group’s enormous live sound swept over North America. A key component of this was Robert Plant, a golden rock deity whose massive voice led their aural assault.
Yet it took the singer a few releases to truly find his feet. Chatting to Cameron Crowe, Robert Plant once revealed why he felt ‘Led Zeppelin III’ was a turning point.
Famously stripping back the volume for a cluster of acoustic-led songs pieced together in a Welsh cottage, the release pushed Robert Plant to new places, forcing him to embrace greater subtlety and nuance.
He told the journalist and film maker: “I was shouting too much on the first album. I stopped shouting a little bit by the second album. By the third one, I finally learned how to sing.”
Indeed, this isn’t some passing comment – Robert Plant can be brutal about his early work, even labelling one song “horrific”. Chatting to the Guardian in 2017, Robert Plant expressed regret over his approach to the band’s take on ‘Babe I’m Going To Leave You’. “I realised that tough, manly approach to singing I’d begun… wasn’t really what it was all about at all. Songs like [Led Zeppelin I’s] Babe I’m Going To Leave You’… I find my vocals on there horrific now. I really should have shut the fuck up!”
The singer retains immense fondness for ‘Led Zeppelin III’ and the band’s time away from the spotlight. Chatting to the Guardian in 2014, he recalled of the recording sessions: “We did things quickly and were serious about making something pretty as well as powerful. 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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