- It is difficult now to remove the association between the lead singer and the chief lyricist. We have become so used to the two effortlessly combining that you can forget that during rock’s heyday, a lot of the singers fronting your favourite groups were more dedicated vocalists than lyricists. As such, your mileage on Robert Plant as a lyricist may vary.
To most, he’s the majestic Led Zeppelin frontman whose love of classic blues forms contrasts with his dedication to fantasy and JRR Tolkien in fascinating ways. There’s a vocal minority, however, that gets tripped up whenever Plant tries to overextend himself. As it happens, one of those people is Plant himself, who, like any self-respecting Brit, has routinely winced at the number of cringeworthy things he did and said, and even recorded, as part of one of the biggest bands on the planet.
It can be somewhat comforting that one of the most famous men in the rock world can still find himself intolerably embarrassing from time to time. Who hasn’t heard themselves back on a recording and wished they had never uttered a single word, or captured a glimpse of themselves dancing at a party and hoped that the world would end the next second?
One of Plant’s most notorious ad-libs, a dicey moment for any non-natural lyricist, came during the band’s 1976 concert film The Song Remains The Same. During the apex of ‘Stairway to Heaven’, just after Plant sings the line “And the forests will echo with laughter”, Plant calls out, “Does anybody remember laughter?” The concerts themselves took place in 1973, but fans truly got the brunt of Plant’s call once The Song Remains The Same hit movie screens three years later.
