ROBERT PLANT - "LED ZEPPELIN

ROBERT PLANT - "LED ZEPPELIN Sometimes Get Taken For Granted As A Cliché Of Rock And Roll, Which Is A Malfunctioning Generalisation"






The following story is courtesy of Neil McCormick from Telegraph.co.uk:

ROBERT PLANT picks up my recording device, a mischievous twinkle in his eye. "I have one of these for vocal ideas," he says. "But I never use it."

So what do you do? "I just wait until the tape starts running and then go, 'Oh baby, baby…'?"

Plant sang the word "baby", or variations thereon, 271 times on LED ZEPPELIN's nine studio albums. It was his shamanic role fronting this groundbreaking, world-conquering rock quartet for 12 years that established him as one of Britain's greatest voices.

But since the group called it a day following the accidental death of drummer John "Bonzo" Bonham in 1980, Plant has continued to chart a unique and adventurous course, taking him from the vintage R&B of the HONEYDRIPPERS to a wild concoction of hybridised world music with his band Strange Sensation.

And just when fans are getting excited about news of a one-off Led Zeppelin charity reunion at the O2 arena in London in November, their singer has resurfaced with something completely different.

Raising Sand (released by Decca on Monday in the UK - Tuesday in North America) is one of the softest, most restrained albums this often wild and extemporaneous singer has ever delivered, a haunted, trembling, otherworldly collection of country-flavoured darkness in which he is paired with ethereal bluegrass singer and violinist ALISON KRAUSS.

"My singing is an affectation of what I've loved since I was a kid," says Plant of the unlikely union. "And I'm a white kid trying to interpret social conditions that don't exist, all that kind of miasma of the dark voodoo hoochie-coochie black American thing, which was obsolete by the time I was born. Alison's voice intrigued me because it didn't have any of that. I don't want to use the term celestial, but it's very pure."

Read more here.

To download the new Raising Sand track called 'Killing The Blues' click here.

LED ZEPPELIN's ROBERT PLANT Wins Beard Of The Year Title

According to ANI, LED ZEPPELIN singer ROBERT PLANT has been proclaimed the man with beard of the year.

The announcement came from the Beard Liberation Front, an informal network of beard wearers. It was Plant's stylish beard he sported at the band’s reunion gig in London earlier this month that won him the title.

Beard Liberation Front organiser Keith Flett said: "The winners this year have stylish beards and are promoting a new 21st Century image of the hirsute