Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Robert Plant

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Robert Plant · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, y'all, it's justin Richmond. Today on the show,
0:22
Speaker 1: we have Robert Plant, someone whose voice I've probably listened
0:26
Speaker 1: to on record more than anyone else ever. Think about
0:30
Speaker 1: all the people in and around the UK in the
0:32
Speaker 1: late sixties who probably could have easily become the singer
0:36
Speaker 1: for Zeppelin, but of course just about any other singer
0:39
Speaker 1: would have grounded that band sound. Instead, by some miracle,
0:44
Speaker 1: they found Plant, who was able to expertly insert himself
0:48
Speaker 1: into their soaring, loud and hard dynamic, creating some of
0:52
Speaker 1: the last centuries best music. But naturally, we could only
0:55
Speaker 1: be lucky for so long. Zeppelin broke up in nineteen
0:59
Speaker 1: eighty after their powerhouse drummer John Bonham passed away. Afterwards,
1:03
Speaker 1: Plant set out on his own, recording songs that drew
1:05
Speaker 1: inspiration from North African music, The Blues and Foe the
1:09
Speaker 1: perfect setup for his next music collaborations with a wonderful
1:14
Speaker 1: fiddle player with an angelic voice named Alison Kraus. Producer
1:19
Speaker 1: T Bone Burnett paired them in two thousand and seven
1:21
Speaker 1: and recorded an album Raising Sand. That album sold over
1:25
Speaker 1: a million copies in the US, won five Grammys, including
1:28
Speaker 1: an album of the year, and if you're around at
1:31
Speaker 1: that time, you remember it received an incredible amount of
1:35
Speaker 1: praise and attention. A decade and a half later, the
1:39
Speaker 1: two plus TBone again finally reunited and released a new album,
1:43
Speaker 1: Raised the Roof. Let's hear some of the song Quatroll
1:46
Speaker 1: World Drifts in from their new project that came out
1:49
Speaker 1: last year. Robert Plant talks about this beautiful new collaboration
2:03
Speaker 1: with Alison Krause with Rick Rubin on today's episode. They
2:07
Speaker 1: also discussed Plant's life changing trip to the Sahara that
2:10
Speaker 1: inspired the riff for led Zeppelin's Cashmere, and he remembers
2:13
Speaker 1: Bonham declaring himself the best drummer in the world their
2:16
Speaker 1: very first meeting. This is broken record liner notes for
2:23
Speaker 1: the digital age. I'm justin Mischian. Here's Rick Rubin and
2:28
Speaker 1: Robert Blant. I was listening to one of your pre
2:31
Speaker 1: Zeppelin songs that I had not heard before, and I
2:34
Speaker 1: wanted to ask you about what singers inspired you when
2:37
Speaker 1: you were young, because what came to mind listening to
2:40
Speaker 1: it was Tom Jones, which blew my mind because I
2:42
Speaker 1: never made that. I never would have made that connection
2:45
Speaker 1: or thought that ever before. Yeah, it was a funny.
2:48
Speaker 1: It was like a kind of hefty tenor pitch that
2:52
Speaker 1: I created. There. I was listening to a guy called
2:56
Speaker 1: Otis Clay and another guy called Vernon Garrett, the Americans. Well,
3:03
Speaker 1: Otis Clay obviously moved over into gospel later on, but
3:06
Speaker 1: he cut some stuff on high records. As a kid,
3:09
Speaker 1: I didn't really know much about the history of anybody,
3:14
Speaker 1: and I was hugely inspired and could never get anywhere
3:18
Speaker 1: near Steve Marriott. He animated his inner turmoil. You know,
3:24
Speaker 1: he was like a wildcat really, but a great voice.
3:28
Speaker 1: And I think if you use the voice enough, bit
3:31
Speaker 1: by bit, you can expand the range. You can kick
3:34
Speaker 1: it up a bit, push it. Your high notes get stronger,
3:37
Speaker 1: and then you can move up the scale a little
3:39
Speaker 1: bit more. The more you work, the more flexible everything becomes.
3:42
Speaker 1: And so as a kid, I really love the guy
3:46
Speaker 1: out of the Temptations as well. I mean, what a
3:48
Speaker 1: great voice and smokey. But we you know, I was
3:51
Speaker 1: taking a hammer to the pearl or really I was
3:53
Speaker 1: just crashing everything around. But so my voice was very
3:57
Speaker 1: oh you know, it was an adventure. Tell me about
4:02
Speaker 1: the scene that you were born into. Tell me about
4:04
Speaker 1: what was the music scene at that point in time.
4:06
Speaker 1: What was on the radio. What would it be like
4:08
Speaker 1: going to an eight club as a kid, Well, there
4:11
Speaker 1: were no nightclubs. It's kind of really post Industrial Revolution
4:16
Speaker 1: Black Country stuff. So there were dance halls, ballrooms, and
4:20
Speaker 1: there was a very vibrant, very active gig scene going on.
4:26
Speaker 1: So in the Black Country and around Birmingham there would
4:29
Speaker 1: be three or four great rooms to go to with
4:33
Speaker 1: the beautiful sprung maple dance floors and coming out of
4:38
Speaker 1: the early sixties where everything was like imitation Chuck Berry,
4:44
Speaker 1: so you know that sweet little sixteen type of stuff.
4:48
Speaker 1: So the rhythms and the dance floor, the whole thing
4:51
Speaker 1: was just this motion of four or four time through
4:55
Speaker 1: those venues. I ended up getting a gig as a
4:58
Speaker 1: master of ceremonies, so I wouldn't introduce the groups that
5:01
Speaker 1: were coming on that night. Through those places came Wilson Pickett.
5:06
Speaker 1: I introduced little Stevie Wonder with his orchestra when Fingertips
5:10
Speaker 1: came out part one and two before the real explosion,
5:15
Speaker 1: and yeah, there's everybody, Johnny Kidd in the Pirates, the Beatles,
5:22
Speaker 1: and there was a town hall scene like here, I
5:25
Speaker 1: guess where the guy who used to run the net
5:27
Speaker 1: Worth concerts in the seventies. He captured the franchises of
5:31
Speaker 1: the local town halls in England, so yeah, you'd see
5:35
Speaker 1: some amazing artists come through, I mean, and the idea
5:39
Speaker 1: of actually packing a town hall with five hundred people
5:42
Speaker 1: dancing and a spot of fighting and pugilism in the
5:47
Speaker 1: corners just for a bit of spice was incredible. So
5:53
Speaker 1: it was a very active scene. But for me, I
5:56
Speaker 1: was younger than those guys, so a little bit younger.
5:59
Speaker 1: So I just used to stand in awe looking up
6:04
Speaker 1: at the stage, you know, watching these people make it work.
6:09
Speaker 1: How old were you at that time? Would you say?
6:11
Speaker 1: About fifteen? I was already in a group then, and
6:16
Speaker 1: we were murdering John Lee Hooker songs as only the
6:19
Speaker 1: English could. Did you think that this would be your
6:21
Speaker 1: professional life or was it just a passing fancy at
6:25
Speaker 1: the time? What was your guests? Well, I didn't have
6:27
Speaker 1: a guess, and I didn't I didn't see anything like
6:30
Speaker 1: the whole idea of a futurism at all. I was
6:35
Speaker 1: still in the cabins of learning, being educated at school
6:39
Speaker 1: and then are at college, so I didn't have any
6:43
Speaker 1: idea of anticipation. But I just knew that there were
6:46
Speaker 1: certain voices and chord structures and scales that did something
6:53
Speaker 1: to me that didn't have any nothing to do with
6:55
Speaker 1: anything that came before. I just didn't know what was
6:57
Speaker 1: happening to me when I heard particular musical notation, just
7:02
Speaker 1: some sort of heraldry, something that promised something at the
7:05
Speaker 1: beginning of a song that was like a kind of
7:09
Speaker 1: was showing me that there was a key to something
7:11
Speaker 1: that we didn't really have in England at all, but
7:15
Speaker 1: it was still going into my into my system and
7:18
Speaker 1: affecting my whole bloodstream with this kind of stuff. I
7:23
Speaker 1: didn't know what it was. It could have been John
7:26
Speaker 1: Lee Hooker just playing boogie chillen, you know, that kind
7:29
Speaker 1: of incessant one chord thing, which was so contra to
7:36
Speaker 1: the kind of sedate English popular themes in music. But
7:41
Speaker 1: it was almost like a funny, how ridiculous At forty
7:44
Speaker 1: fifty years later, I'd end up in West Africa with
7:47
Speaker 1: a bunch of Tuareg north of Timbuctoo who were playing
7:51
Speaker 1: that very deal. Unbeknown they had no idea about you know,
7:57
Speaker 1: John Lee Hooker at all, but it was the same groove. Yes,
8:00
Speaker 1: So as a kid, I just held these clarions of
8:03
Speaker 1: sonic clarions that came and arrested me, you know, much
8:08
Speaker 1: to the fear of my parents, who saw me as
8:10
Speaker 1: an academic icon. Do you remember any particular songs from
8:14
Speaker 1: that period that when you heard them, just sort of
8:16
Speaker 1: like blew your mind or felt different than everything that
8:19
Speaker 1: came before. Yeah. On a melodic level, I think it
8:23
Speaker 1: must be Alan Toussaint who played the piano lick that
8:26
Speaker 1: opened I like it like that by Chris Kenner. It's
8:29
Speaker 1: just that very the whole Crescent City intro because no
8:34
Speaker 1: sooner he created this introduction than the song kicked into
8:38
Speaker 1: a groove, very polished groove. I mean Chris Kenner's records
8:43
Speaker 1: really were well they were. It was a bad groove
8:46
Speaker 1: and about this soul thing, but they really polished up
8:49
Speaker 1: that track. But I didn't know anything about it really.
8:53
Speaker 1: I mean some of the John Lee Hooker stuff that
8:55
Speaker 1: I heard was, say, the opening of Boom Boom or
9:01
Speaker 1: Dimples that, the swing on that and the fact that
9:05
Speaker 1: the guitar I didn't know that at the time. I
9:08
Speaker 1: couldn't actually, I didn't have any vision of what was right,
9:12
Speaker 1: and what was wrong about people's playing But it just
9:15
Speaker 1: seemed so sort of random. Yes, there was no sign
9:19
Speaker 1: of Johnny Mathis. It was just this kind of wow,
9:22
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, I was moved by this stuff, and
9:25
Speaker 1: I began to realize it was all black, you know
9:29
Speaker 1: that I could hear I could hear these chimes or
9:32
Speaker 1: whatever they were. But you know, so those were really
9:36
Speaker 1: sort of the bells that started ringing. I mean, really,
9:40
Speaker 1: it's a it's a that's a pretty profound question because
9:43
Speaker 1: if I think about it, I could also say that
9:46
Speaker 1: people like Snuff Garrett in La were producing for Liberty.
9:51
Speaker 1: I know this now. I didn't know then, but you
9:53
Speaker 1: could hear Johnny Bennett's Cincinnati Fireball on the flip side
9:58
Speaker 1: of Dreaming, and it was just everything was there, chick vocals,
10:03
Speaker 1: string parts, this guy who was somewhere near Elvis, you know,
10:09
Speaker 1: and it was a ditty. Yeah. But the word play
10:13
Speaker 1: in that kind of teen scene thing was right up
10:16
Speaker 1: my street then, because I was in love with everybody,
10:18
Speaker 1: you know, I had a dream about every girl on
10:21
Speaker 1: the street, and these songs kind of they spoke for me.
10:26
Speaker 1: So other than the bands that would come through, what
10:29
Speaker 1: was the local scene, Like, were many kids making music
10:32
Speaker 1: at that time? Yes, there were hundreds and hundreds of groups,
10:36
Speaker 1: and everybody was playing Bye Bye Johnny wrong. I mean
10:42
Speaker 1: the whole the chuck Berry rhythm sections, when we never
10:46
Speaker 1: kind of worked out that one part of the band
10:48
Speaker 1: was rocking and the other guys were swinging behind it
10:52
Speaker 1: the rhythm sections, and we just couldn't read that. Yeah,
10:56
Speaker 1: everyone was just playing the same part right. Yeah, it
10:59
Speaker 1: was awful. It was just like what wow. But then again,
11:02
Speaker 1: we were all making the same mistake. And people wore
11:05
Speaker 1: those jackets like you see with the Safaris now, the
11:09
Speaker 1: kind of surfbeat guys over here. So most people had
11:13
Speaker 1: a kind of maroon suit on with a black velvet
11:15
Speaker 1: collar and had those foot movements like Cliff Richard and
11:19
Speaker 1: the Shadows, that sort of strange choreography, which is really
11:25
Speaker 1: that's all we had. When did folk make its appearance,
11:30
Speaker 1: Well around the same time, I guess. You know the
11:33
Speaker 1: last clip in that Hairspray movie when the girl wins
11:37
Speaker 1: the dance contest and they're walking home down the street
11:42
Speaker 1: in Philly and some hipster beat nick knocks on the
11:45
Speaker 1: door and as they're walking past, the door opens and
11:49
Speaker 1: they're listening to Dylan and somebody hands them a spliff.
11:53
Speaker 1: It's that changeover, that moment where the teen scene just
11:59
Speaker 1: gave way because the generation half a generation older than
12:03
Speaker 1: me were already in the folk clubs singing Irish mournful ballads.
12:10
Speaker 1: And I was attracted to the whole deal because if
12:15
Speaker 1: I liked Chris Kenner and Two Saints production and I
12:19
Speaker 1: didn't know what it was, then I would go to
12:22
Speaker 1: a folk club and I'd hear some guy playing an
12:24
Speaker 1: eight string guitar. I didn't really recognize what it was
12:27
Speaker 1: at the time, but it was because it was kind
12:30
Speaker 1: of disheveled, was rough, and also it was an uncharted
12:35
Speaker 1: land for us to hear this, to try and play
12:39
Speaker 1: this music. So and the scene there, with that kind
12:45
Speaker 1: of folk club thing led to a whole different intellect.
12:49
Speaker 1: People were talking about wee free Kings, Roland Kirk and
12:54
Speaker 1: you know all the good looking girls. Now suddenly they
12:58
Speaker 1: didn't have a million petticoats, they had long hair, and
13:01
Speaker 1: they were carrying a buck, a white LP or the
13:04
Speaker 1: first Dylan album or whatever it was. So I suppose, really,
13:08
Speaker 1: if you think about Dylan's very first venture that Columbia record.
13:13
Speaker 1: It opened up for sure, all that buck a white
13:17
Speaker 1: stuff and fixing to die and you know, and the
13:21
Speaker 1: scene was amazing because that those people were again a
13:25
Speaker 1: bit older than me, but they had a key to stuff.
13:28
Speaker 1: They were employed, they had income so they could buy records.
13:31
Speaker 1: There was an RCA label in Europe called RCA Jazz.
13:35
Speaker 1: It was a French label that was putting out ten
13:38
Speaker 1: inch albums and six track EPs, which opened up the
13:43
Speaker 1: door to the original Sonny Boy Williamson, Elevated Woman and
13:47
Speaker 1: all that stuff. I'd take it home. By this time,
13:49
Speaker 1: my parents were really worried because it was all right,
13:54
Speaker 1: Johnny Bennett was palatable perhaps, but the idea of the
13:59
Speaker 1: blues thing must have been something else. Because I had
14:03
Speaker 1: one of those record players where you could lift up
14:05
Speaker 1: the central armor that you could just keep playing the
14:07
Speaker 1: same forty five over and again that yes, the playback
14:12
Speaker 1: arm would come back onto the where the stylus would
14:14
Speaker 1: come back onto the record for five hours or something,
14:19
Speaker 1: so you know, Spoonful or from the Howling Wolf that
14:24
Speaker 1: I think that's maybe something like that was the final
14:28
Speaker 1: frontier for my parents. And when I was when I
14:32
Speaker 1: went to school or I was doing a paper around us. Something.
14:35
Speaker 1: I came back and I cut the plug off the
14:36
Speaker 1: record player. That was it. That was open war. It's
14:40
Speaker 1: too much, too fine, too fine. Yeah, it was a
14:43
Speaker 1: plug too far. Yes, So that was it. Then I
14:47
Speaker 1: chose bohemia, you know, even though I could go home
14:51
Speaker 1: and have a nice, warm bath, that was not really
14:54
Speaker 1: And you know, people were carrying the literature the cam
14:58
Speaker 1: Albert Camu and Shatter and Darma Bum. You know that
15:03
Speaker 1: everybody suddenly was hip to this stuff. And then two
15:07
Speaker 1: German promoters, Lippman and Rao, who had been operating pre
15:12
Speaker 1: Second World War, representing well some of the main nightclub
15:17
Speaker 1: personalities then in the old days, they realized this bohemian
15:23
Speaker 1: scene was all over Europe, in all the main towns,
15:26
Speaker 1: and spiraling into small, smaller communities because pop music really
15:34
Speaker 1: in Europe didn't popular music was only the popular music
15:38
Speaker 1: that the program planners were prepared to give you. Oh,
15:43
Speaker 1: of course, that's how it always is. But it was
15:45
Speaker 1: so narrow an option that we all knew that there
15:50
Speaker 1: was something else, obviously, something else going on, you know.
15:55
Speaker 1: So I think this whole movement was inspired by the
15:59
Speaker 1: conservatism of our media and the fact that it seemed
16:03
Speaker 1: to me like the upper echelons of broadcasting and the
16:08
Speaker 1: British Board, I think, corporation whatever, we're waiting for this
16:11
Speaker 1: thing to pass over so they could get back to
16:14
Speaker 1: the audio volume that they knew and loved. So well, yeah,
16:18
Speaker 1: it's funny really, because the mainstream in Europe was augmented
16:22
Speaker 1: slowly by pirate radio that were ships out in the
16:26
Speaker 1: British channel English Channel who were transmitting programs which were
16:31
Speaker 1: sponsored by various record labels. So you know, when I
16:36
Speaker 1: was doing my homework at my grandparents house on a Friday,
16:39
Speaker 1: I could tune in to Tony Hall who had this
16:42
Speaker 1: amazing called the American Hot Ten, and it would be
16:46
Speaker 1: all London American Records, and London American as a record
16:50
Speaker 1: label was basically a conglomerate channel and filter smaller labels
16:56
Speaker 1: in the US who didn't have international deals. So it
17:01
Speaker 1: would you'd go right the way through from Shop Around
17:04
Speaker 1: by the Miracles to the Chimes or Dells, Alan or
17:10
Speaker 1: Chuck Berry was there on London, you know, and the
17:12
Speaker 1: whole Chess catalog from from Chicago came out through that label.
17:17
Speaker 1: So there was jazz, and there was Diana Washington, and
17:20
Speaker 1: there was that. So as time went on, more and
17:23
Speaker 1: more as an English kid, I was becoming more and
17:27
Speaker 1: more and more sort of engrossed and consumed by the
17:32
Speaker 1: variety of music from America. I'm surprised to hear about
17:36
Speaker 1: Dylan because I think of obviously, we all think of
17:39
Speaker 1: the blues coming from the States and then the British
17:42
Speaker 1: invasion kind of reacting to the American blues scene. But
17:45
Speaker 1: I never thought about that with folk, because we think
17:47
Speaker 1: of folk as being traditionally Irish music originally, so we
17:51
Speaker 1: don't think of the American connection here. But it's interesting
17:54
Speaker 1: to hear Dylan be the first name that you bring up. Yeah, well,
17:58
Speaker 1: girl from the North Country, what is that really? Is
18:02
Speaker 1: it Scarborough Fair or where does it come from? Of course,
18:06
Speaker 1: now I know a lot more historically. Now I can
18:08
Speaker 1: put people to sleep if they're feeling unsettled on an aeroplane,
18:12
Speaker 1: I can just give him a quick three hours About
18:16
Speaker 1: the conversation between the English Murder Ballad and Doc Bogs.
18:21
Speaker 1: I don't know, but I just think that there was
18:26
Speaker 1: so much romance about Dylan, so much enigma, and he
18:30
Speaker 1: was not on his own of course, but for us
18:32
Speaker 1: he was what he was the Dama bum. You know,
18:36
Speaker 1: he was bringing this, he was opening the doors. And
18:39
Speaker 1: then I suppose Leonard Cohen after him would be important
18:42
Speaker 1: in the UK. Sure, well, I don't know, you know
18:45
Speaker 1: I was. I think I could hear the sort of
18:49
Speaker 1: what everybody's opinion about music, that this very the very
18:52
Speaker 1: idea that we are doing this. You and I have
18:56
Speaker 1: to be both been aware of each other for a
18:58
Speaker 1: long long time, half a century. In my case, I
19:02
Speaker 1: suppose really to talk about music now is a bit
19:05
Speaker 1: It's a bit odd because I only know what I
19:08
Speaker 1: can tell you in this flurry of energy and a
19:11
Speaker 1: small coffee. But what's really happened to me all the
19:15
Speaker 1: way through was the causing effect, and one thing leads
19:19
Speaker 1: to another leads all the way through. Sir Dylan and
19:22
Speaker 1: his adventures opened up so that we knew about Dave
19:29
Speaker 1: van Ronk and you know Spider John Corner. I mean
19:33
Speaker 1: Canned Heat. Never mind the British bringing the blues to America,
19:36
Speaker 1: it was already that the young white kids were really doing,
19:39
Speaker 1: making a great job of it with Mike Bloomfield and
19:43
Speaker 1: Elvin Bishop and Canned Heat and seeing those clips of
19:46
Speaker 1: Newport Folk Festival and stuff that now or in nineteen
19:51
Speaker 1: seventy even looking back and see him our good friend
19:54
Speaker 1: armat Urtic and in the crowd. You know, it's the links.
19:58
Speaker 1: They are indelible parts of my DNA. They're fantastic in
20:02
Speaker 1: the true sense of the word, channels of stimulus. We'll
20:08
Speaker 1: be right back with more from Rick Rubin and Robert Plant.
20:11
Speaker 1: After a quick break. We're back with more from Robert
20:18
Speaker 1: Plant and Rick Rubin. When Zeppelin one first came out,
20:22
Speaker 1: did it take off right away or what was the
20:25
Speaker 1: reception right in the beginning, Well, we were playing before
20:29
Speaker 1: he came out, so we got to La December sixty eight,
20:34
Speaker 1: and it came out some time in January. And I
20:38
Speaker 1: guess Jimmy's reputation from the Yardbirds was powerful, and he
20:43
Speaker 1: threw some amazing shapes musically and physically. It was just
20:47
Speaker 1: there was a whole cavalcade of energy. And you have
20:53
Speaker 1: to be transmitting in the same on the same planet
20:57
Speaker 1: as that, otherwise you don't have there's no gig for you. Yes,
21:01
Speaker 1: and I really knew how to do that because John
21:04
Speaker 1: Bonham and I we already had our own similar but
21:08
Speaker 1: mysteriously obscure Band of Joy, which was nuts It was
21:13
Speaker 1: really stretching within the limitations that we had as kids,
21:17
Speaker 1: you know. I mean I was nineteen when I met
21:21
Speaker 1: Jimmy and John Paul. But the energy, the fireball that
21:25
Speaker 1: we developed and was created around us took no prisoners,
21:31
Speaker 1: with or without a success of an album or what
21:33
Speaker 1: everybody is. But it did kick in and it was
21:35
Speaker 1: a very stimulating, incredible surge because with the advent of FM,
21:42
Speaker 1: radio playlists were abandoned quite often. You know, it would
21:46
Speaker 1: just you could go from Voorjac to Kaleidoscope speaking from
21:51
Speaker 1: Mars or whatever it would be. It was just fantastic that,
21:54
Speaker 1: you know, people were just going, yeah, man, this is music.
21:57
Speaker 1: And then so we'd go places and they just put
22:00
Speaker 1: our record on and play both sides of it and
22:03
Speaker 1: then talk for a while and then they say, what
22:06
Speaker 1: do you want to play? You know, So they'd let
22:08
Speaker 1: us loose on the libraries in the radio stations, which
22:11
Speaker 1: was the wrong thing to do. Incredible, yea, so great
22:14
Speaker 1: though that you Yeah, so we were kind of passing
22:17
Speaker 1: them out through the toilet window. Look quick, take this,
22:21
Speaker 1: you know this thievery Yeah. Yeah, it was so much more,
22:26
Speaker 1: so much more freedom in the whole delivery of music
22:31
Speaker 1: to the people in those days. What was the feeling
22:35
Speaker 1: after bottom passes. Was there any talk of continuing or
22:38
Speaker 1: was it clear that that was not going to happen. Well,
22:41
Speaker 1: you know, as a four piece band, what are you
22:44
Speaker 1: going to do? I mean, I don't know how anybody could, ever,
22:47
Speaker 1: any group of people could find when twenty five percent
22:51
Speaker 1: of the driving wheel, which is so characteristic and really surges.
22:57
Speaker 1: I mean, it wasn't just that he was a magnificent drummer.
23:01
Speaker 1: It was just more of the point that he was.
23:04
Speaker 1: He could telegraph the turns in the songs. Yeah, he
23:07
Speaker 1: could make it all swear, and when he was tired
23:11
Speaker 1: of an idiom within the song, he'd go into Wolf's
23:14
Speaker 1: time for a minute and just look at me and laugh. Yeah.
23:18
Speaker 1: He was playing jazz, yeah, yeah, and he got fed
23:20
Speaker 1: up at one time. I remember in somewhere in New York,
23:23
Speaker 1: he just got up and walked through his drum kit.
23:25
Speaker 1: That's it. I don't want to do that. And we
23:27
Speaker 1: switched quickly to going to California or so what somebody
23:31
Speaker 1: lured him back onto the Riser. Well, it's funny, really,
23:35
Speaker 1: because last night I spent the evening with Jason Bonham,
23:38
Speaker 1: and it was fantastic. I mean, Jason's come a long
23:41
Speaker 1: way and he's he's fifty five, and I think I've
23:44
Speaker 1: known him since he was one. Yeah, so Bonham was crucial.
23:49
Speaker 1: Couldn't nobody could consider moving on? Since you played with
23:52
Speaker 1: so many great musicians over the years, would you say
23:55
Speaker 1: that the nature of playing with him was a particular thing.
23:59
Speaker 1: Was he unlike any drubber you've ever played with? Well? Yeah,
24:02
Speaker 1: Bearing in mind that we started playing together in one
24:05
Speaker 1: of those sprung maple leaf dance floors, and it's in
24:08
Speaker 1: a hall when I had a group caller Crawling King Snakes,
24:12
Speaker 1: And I mean we were too young to drive. We
24:15
Speaker 1: hadn't got driving licenses. We were just kids. And he said,
24:18
Speaker 1: you're okay, he said, you know, he said, but you'd
24:22
Speaker 1: be a lot better if you had the best drummer
24:24
Speaker 1: in the world behind you. I said, yeah, but I
24:26
Speaker 1: already do. And I said, well, okay, I know that
24:30
Speaker 1: you're good, but where do you live? And he told me.
24:33
Speaker 1: I said, oh, you can't join our group. We can't
24:35
Speaker 1: afford the gasoline to go and pick you up and
24:38
Speaker 1: drop you off. So so we did a bit of
24:41
Speaker 1: thievery and I got caught by the police for sucking
24:45
Speaker 1: fuel out of a gas tank one night, just to
24:48
Speaker 1: keep it going. I think most every drummer I've worked
24:51
Speaker 1: with in their own way has had a huge effect
24:53
Speaker 1: on me, really right up to right now, you know.
24:57
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean clive'sma who played with us in
25:00
Speaker 1: the original post page plant times in strange sensations with Radiohead.
25:07
Speaker 1: Now when I met him, was just finishing off the
25:10
Speaker 1: Porter's Head era, and he in a totally different way.
25:14
Speaker 1: He'd done all that stuff with Runny size, the drumming
25:16
Speaker 1: bass stuffs from Bristol. He still is and at that
25:21
Speaker 1: turnaround of drumming and the incidental polyrhythmic stuff that which
25:28
Speaker 1: now you'd just get four good bars and loop it
25:31
Speaker 1: up and then drop an incendiary into it after a minute.
25:35
Speaker 1: It was brilliant. Let's talk about that for a good
25:37
Speaker 1: bars idea, because I used to collect Zeppelin bootlegs of
25:41
Speaker 1: live shows and they were so different from night to night,
25:45
Speaker 1: the dynamics of the song, the length of the sections,
25:48
Speaker 1: it was so improvisational. Was that unique to your band
25:52
Speaker 1: or was that what everybody was doing at that time?
25:54
Speaker 1: Because it seems so far and now, well, I think
25:57
Speaker 1: the flexibility was very interesting because John, Paul Jones, and
26:03
Speaker 1: in fact the three of them, I became just like
26:06
Speaker 1: a passenger, realio voyeur. I'd bought the ticket, not most
26:09
Speaker 1: of the time. Sometimes I could leave the stage and
26:11
Speaker 1: talk to members of the audience and come back on again.
26:14
Speaker 1: And I did start learning Welsh at one point at
26:17
Speaker 1: a little textbook. But they get into grooves like Alphonse
26:22
Speaker 1: Musan or Pretty Purdy. They just listened to stuff on
26:26
Speaker 1: the way to the gigs. We all carried these big
26:29
Speaker 1: record players with huge boxes of albums, and there would
26:34
Speaker 1: be all that late Johnny guitar Watson, all that sort
26:38
Speaker 1: of great groove stuff, and so that would make its
26:42
Speaker 1: way into extended instrumentals. But everybody I think was doing
26:47
Speaker 1: it the airplane in their way. We're doing it grateful
26:50
Speaker 1: dead for sure, you know. But I think there was
26:52
Speaker 1: something kind of unusual about the whole the three guys
26:56
Speaker 1: in zeppelins, where it was that they kick in immediately
27:00
Speaker 1: and we could write stuff like the Crunge on Houses,
27:03
Speaker 1: the Holy you know, we go and see James Brown's
27:07
Speaker 1: real hot bander Jay Bees, and just the stimulation and
27:13
Speaker 1: the stimulants of the time just oh, just taking it
27:17
Speaker 1: all in. I think that's the thing. I think it
27:19
Speaker 1: was a wide open possibility in those periods in the
27:23
Speaker 1: early seventies of writing, where we were leaning, borrowing, leaning,
27:28
Speaker 1: and developing brand new stuff in a very beautiful, haphazard way. Yeah,
27:32
Speaker 1: we didn't have a group chaplain, but it always came
27:36
Speaker 1: out like new music. Like you would be inspired by
27:38
Speaker 1: James Brown, but the theme that came out sounded like
27:41
Speaker 1: led Zeppelin. You'd be inspired by reggae music, and the
27:44
Speaker 1: theme that came out sounded like led Zeppelin. It never
27:47
Speaker 1: sounded derivative ever, it always sounded like new music. Yeah,
27:52
Speaker 1: I mean I used to take the stuff home. I
27:55
Speaker 1: mean I didn't have a stereo system until the end
27:57
Speaker 1: of led Zeppelin two. So the only time I ever
28:00
Speaker 1: heard any stereo interesting their stereo stuff was when I
28:05
Speaker 1: went in the studio and heard the panning on a
28:07
Speaker 1: Whole Lot of Love or something like that. You know,
28:10
Speaker 1: it's pretty primeval that my world. I had a simple
28:14
Speaker 1: tape recorder and I was able to work with backing
28:17
Speaker 1: tracks and stuff at home. But my contribution was really
28:20
Speaker 1: tough because these guys were taking it somewhere nobody had
28:24
Speaker 1: been before. And I had to make something melodically interesting.
28:29
Speaker 1: And also by that time, I was twenty twenty one
28:32
Speaker 1: years old, and I was still trite in my lyrical
28:36
Speaker 1: wherever it was, But here and there it started. I
28:39
Speaker 1: started shaping some opinions up. And having enough time as
28:42
Speaker 1: a as a as a parent, and still being around
28:45
Speaker 1: that bohemian scene I mentioned, and still living where I
28:48
Speaker 1: came from as I still do now exactly the same.
28:52
Speaker 1: Bonzo's houses like five miles from mine, still, Yeah, and
28:57
Speaker 1: it's there's nothing antiquarian about any of it, you know.
29:00
Speaker 1: We just blues rolls on, you know. So yeah, it was.
29:04
Speaker 1: It was a prolific time and a time of a
29:07
Speaker 1: great There was a great of mutual inspiration between the
29:12
Speaker 1: four of us at that time, and there was a
29:16
Speaker 1: lot of fun. Were there clicks within the band? Like,
29:19
Speaker 1: were there any people who hung out with other people
29:21
Speaker 1: more than other people? How did it work? The internal
29:23
Speaker 1: dynamics of the band, It would change. I mean the
29:27
Speaker 1: very very first times together was obviously Bonzo and I
29:32
Speaker 1: borrowing his mom's car to go down to an audition
29:37
Speaker 1: and siphoning the petrol out of somebody else's car while
29:39
Speaker 1: they were asleep to get there, that sort of deal,
29:43
Speaker 1: and it's time went on. I think really the sharing
29:47
Speaker 1: of musicality was the kind of beacon so John Paul
29:52
Speaker 1: and Bonzo made when we were working on stuff, when
29:55
Speaker 1: we were staying in these sort of what you'd loosely
29:58
Speaker 1: call residential places, which were basically houses with a staircase
30:03
Speaker 1: of stairwell where we could get that sound that the
30:07
Speaker 1: Beastie Boys borrowed. The whole deal was like we were there,
30:13
Speaker 1: so sometimes somebody would go to bed, or somebody would
30:17
Speaker 1: go somewhere, and some two guys might be left just
30:21
Speaker 1: playing rhythm parts, just grooving two of them, you know,
30:26
Speaker 1: and Jones's playing man, I mean, just huh. It was
30:31
Speaker 1: very funny and it's still funny now with John Paul
30:34
Speaker 1: because he used to say to me, well, yeah, it
30:38
Speaker 1: seems like a good melody on that track, right. I said,
30:41
Speaker 1: what do you think about the second verse of the lyrics?
30:43
Speaker 1: He said, oh, no, sorry, I don't listen to the lyrics.
30:47
Speaker 1: That was another brandishing of the war, you know, the tomahawk, right, Okay,
30:53
Speaker 1: So I wrote a couple of songs about him shrouded
30:57
Speaker 1: in some other character, and it's just just I said,
31:00
Speaker 1: you may perhaps you may need to listen to this John.
31:05
Speaker 1: So it was funny, you know, But Jimmy and I
31:07
Speaker 1: had this pastoral thing that we we traveled back from
31:10
Speaker 1: places through We had adventures in Thailand and India, and
31:15
Speaker 1: Jimmy went on to Egypt. I spent so much time
31:19
Speaker 1: in Morocco and got him to come down there and
31:23
Speaker 1: seventy two. We traveled a lot just off the beaten track,
31:28
Speaker 1: and we got pretty close to some times when we
31:31
Speaker 1: were very lucky to get out of some of these places. Well,
31:34
Speaker 1: we found ourselves in the wrong parts of nearly every
31:37
Speaker 1: city we went to intentionally quite often. But it gave
31:42
Speaker 1: us more savor for what we were writing and thinking
31:45
Speaker 1: and feeling. I mean, there wouldn't be a Kashmir without
31:48
Speaker 1: us traveling down to the pre Sahara in Morocco or whatever.
31:53
Speaker 1: But then again, Jones's contribution to Kashmir was strong, and
31:57
Speaker 1: he never went. Were the trips primarily designed for inspiration
32:01
Speaker 1: or was it just what you were interested in the
32:03
Speaker 1: time and the inspiration happened to happen now that we
32:05
Speaker 1: just didn't want to go home, yea. So we played
32:08
Speaker 1: in Japan and its ages to get home. No there
32:11
Speaker 1: was no, it wasn't We didn't go out to find
32:13
Speaker 1: the world for inspiration. It just we just went out
32:17
Speaker 1: to find everything for everything amazing. Yeah, it's insane. Yeah,
32:24
Speaker 1: interesting thing you said earlier about the jam band esthetic
32:27
Speaker 1: like Grateful Dead, we're doing it. We think of the
32:30
Speaker 1: Grateful Dead as a band that that's what they do,
32:33
Speaker 1: whereas led Zeppelin, because of the success and the pristine
32:38
Speaker 1: quality of the albums, we think of those songs as
32:41
Speaker 1: carved in stone based on the album version. We don't
32:45
Speaker 1: think about any Grateful Dead songs that way, do you
32:47
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. So it's it's an interesting thing.
32:51
Speaker 1: You don't expect to see led Zeppelin on a good
32:54
Speaker 1: night and it'd be different than the thing that you're
32:57
Speaker 1: used to. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so it's a kind of shock.
33:00
Speaker 1: I think most irrelevance of that was it would be
33:03
Speaker 1: pretty dull to follow structure. I mean, that's the thing
33:08
Speaker 1: that takes We all know talking about music is like
33:13
Speaker 1: dancing about architecture. That's a little bit of a tired
33:16
Speaker 1: but here we are doing it. But the bottom line is,
33:18
Speaker 1: if you had to, if you were stuck in the
33:22
Speaker 1: Al Martino vibe, every night or whatever it is, and
33:25
Speaker 1: you knew where it began and ended. Well, surely accountancy
33:30
Speaker 1: wasn't such a bad idea. Perhaps it was. You know,
33:34
Speaker 1: I could have been working in the Forestry Commission or
33:37
Speaker 1: something like that, watching the changing of the seasons, and
33:41
Speaker 1: that would have been way more rewarding. In fact, I'm
33:45
Speaker 1: going now goodbye. Yea. So it was great, I mean,
33:49
Speaker 1: and that claret. That call goes back to the folk clubs,
33:53
Speaker 1: back to the guys singing the Irish murder ballads, unaccompanied
33:58
Speaker 1: singers rambling on all over the place with old stories
34:03
Speaker 1: and tales that had no end. And how many stanzas
34:06
Speaker 1: of the Hangman's Beautiful Daughter can you remember? I mean,
34:11
Speaker 1: it's almost like people quote from Monty Python and the
34:14
Speaker 1: Holy Grail. Well, a lot of my friends we all
34:17
Speaker 1: quote from the Incredible String Band, you know, that sort
34:19
Speaker 1: of those places to go where it didn't matter about
34:24
Speaker 1: so much about structure or form. Yes, which is kind
34:27
Speaker 1: of interesting because look where I am now. How do
34:29
Speaker 1: you compare your relationship with music now versus when you
34:32
Speaker 1: were young? Well, when I was young, I knew nothing.
34:34
Speaker 1: I was a stolen child. It's like music came and
34:37
Speaker 1: swept me away in the Torrent and the flood, and
34:41
Speaker 1: I knew nothing. I knew no indication of anything. I
34:45
Speaker 1: could just as easily get excited about a colliery brass
34:47
Speaker 1: band from Yorkshire as I could from almost from Sleepy
34:51
Speaker 1: Gynestes until Sleepy Gynestes actually was Elvis. I could hear
34:57
Speaker 1: that in his voice, and I could hear this mournful
34:59
Speaker 1: thing come along. And I think my perspective, or the
35:04
Speaker 1: information's highway into me just grew and grew and crew.
35:10
Speaker 1: It's not my business to be opinionated, but I think
35:14
Speaker 1: this has been the great escape, this whole deal of
35:18
Speaker 1: my time to inquire into music. And yet, because you
35:24
Speaker 1: know I'm from England, I still don't know too much
35:27
Speaker 1: about certain departments of stuff, you know, certain categories, certain
35:33
Speaker 1: colleges of music. I'm like a kind of naive collector
35:37
Speaker 1: of beautiful sounds. We're going to take a quick break,
35:40
Speaker 1: but we'll be right back with more from Robert Plant.
35:48
Speaker 1: We're back with the rest of Rick Rubin's conversation with
35:50
Speaker 1: Robert Plant. How did the first collaboration with Allison come about?
35:55
Speaker 1: She if she was sitting normally, sits just next to
35:59
Speaker 1: me over there when we do stuff together. And she
36:02
Speaker 1: has a theory and I'm going to use this theory
36:04
Speaker 1: as being it because it can't be hugely specific. I
36:09
Speaker 1: got invited somehow by the guys who run the Rock
36:13
Speaker 1: and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland because of
36:17
Speaker 1: my borrowing from Lead Belly to contribute to a night
36:23
Speaker 1: a tribute to him at the Cleveland Concert Hall or
36:29
Speaker 1: something some fancy hall which you'd have to approach with
36:32
Speaker 1: hushed tones as you go in. There was Odetta, Harry Bellafonte,
36:36
Speaker 1: Clarence Gatemouth Brown, and myself what would I do? And
36:42
Speaker 1: I had a communication with Alison and there was this idea,
36:49
Speaker 1: the whole idea of like, have you ever thought about
36:52
Speaker 1: singing with somebody else? And I thought, well, how on
36:56
Speaker 1: earth would I be able to sing alongside somebody else?
36:58
Speaker 1: Because I really don't know what I'm going to sing next?
37:01
Speaker 1: In the middle of a song that's got a melody,
37:04
Speaker 1: I maneuver melodies around like crazy. But anyway, she came
37:08
Speaker 1: to the rehearsals in Cleveland and it was a very
37:13
Speaker 1: very warm and endearing moment of meeting this new person.
37:19
Speaker 1: And she could play like a fiddle plane. I was
37:22
Speaker 1: insane we had this idea. I had this idea. Justin
37:25
Speaker 1: Adams was with me from the Space Shifters, and I
37:29
Speaker 1: had a word with David Hidalgo and he brought Lost
37:32
Speaker 1: Lobos with him and I asked him if he would
37:34
Speaker 1: bring his Marry Archiesque instruments, the quadra and all that
37:37
Speaker 1: sort of thing, so that we could do lead belly stuff.
37:40
Speaker 1: But we weren't going to hammer it, because the worst
37:42
Speaker 1: thing in the world, as British rock group can do,
37:45
Speaker 1: is hammer the blues into submission. So we did and
37:51
Speaker 1: Alison was very comical. We laughed a lot because she
37:57
Speaker 1: kind of straightened me up and said, yes, she with
38:03
Speaker 1: that sort of tone, of affected tone of boye, if
38:05
Speaker 1: you want me to sing with you, how can I
38:08
Speaker 1: sing with you if I don't know what the hell
38:10
Speaker 1: you're going to sing next? How can I harmonize with
38:13
Speaker 1: you when nobody knows what the hell you're doing, including you?
38:16
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, that's a very good point. So that's
38:19
Speaker 1: what happens in harmony, is then, is it? Because I
38:21
Speaker 1: thought in Zeppelin I'd just sing and put a third
38:24
Speaker 1: on top of it, or Jimmy would and John Bonham
38:27
Speaker 1: had a great voice, would just do some trial our las,
38:31
Speaker 1: but we were never going to be the Association or
38:33
Speaker 1: something like that. Sadly I wish we had. So it
38:36
Speaker 1: was a bit of a sort of roop, and I
38:40
Speaker 1: think it frightened Allison to death. But it was funny
38:43
Speaker 1: and it was a fantastic night. It was really really good,
38:47
Speaker 1: and she thought that there was some carriage in it,
38:52
Speaker 1: and I thought there was a possibility of moving along
38:56
Speaker 1: together in some form or another, or even just singing.
38:59
Speaker 1: And I was fully aware of the fact that because
39:02
Speaker 1: she's that much younger than me, I think led Zeppelin
39:05
Speaker 1: kind of. I wouldn't say it frightened her, but I
39:08
Speaker 1: think because of her time as a young girl, she
39:12
Speaker 1: was so diligent in her work and in her studies,
39:15
Speaker 1: if you like that. If she ventured into rock at all,
39:19
Speaker 1: it was that kind of eighties place where melody and
39:23
Speaker 1: pop was disguised with big guitars. Yes, there was no
39:27
Speaker 1: existential moments of spiraling into the vortex. So I don't
39:32
Speaker 1: think she really had any idea about what I was
39:35
Speaker 1: all about. Particularly, she probably did a better homework, but
39:39
Speaker 1: and so why not try and see what we can do?
39:42
Speaker 1: And I thought, what does that mean? I've got to
39:44
Speaker 1: sing the same thing. How am I ever going to
39:47
Speaker 1: actually hold a melody down? But so we came to
39:50
Speaker 1: this very studio, met up and discussed the in advance,
39:57
Speaker 1: the possibility of actually making some music together. And we
40:01
Speaker 1: needed a master magician because we were so radically different
40:06
Speaker 1: in how the way we bridge ejected, what we'd spent
40:10
Speaker 1: our lives of listening to and how we thought of anything.
40:13
Speaker 1: You know. We would just come from the other side
40:16
Speaker 1: of the world and she'd worked with t Bone Bennette
40:19
Speaker 1: on down from the Mountain and oh brother were art
40:22
Speaker 1: out Bone. He's a remarkable pistol, He's a cannon. He's
40:29
Speaker 1: got a head full of stars that fly out when
40:32
Speaker 1: you least expect him. As some the great Glove Idea
40:35
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, But I didn't know anything about
40:37
Speaker 1: I just knew who he was and what he did.
40:39
Speaker 1: I remember as a kid he was on the roll
40:41
Speaker 1: in Thunder review that sort of thing, but I didn't
40:43
Speaker 1: know what he was going to be all about. It
40:47
Speaker 1: was quite startling. So we agreed that we would try
40:52
Speaker 1: about four songs and if it didn't work, just give
40:55
Speaker 1: it up and just move on. Because adventures adventure and
41:00
Speaker 1: I got a load of songs off my jukebox. And
41:04
Speaker 1: the deal was that I would go to her house
41:06
Speaker 1: on the Sunday morning here in Ville and I would
41:10
Speaker 1: meet him and her and the door opened, flung open,
41:14
Speaker 1: and there's this sort of there's Allison being really charming,
41:17
Speaker 1: and they're behind her, this great imposing shape of John
41:25
Speaker 1: Henry Burnett. And I went, shit, So now I've got
41:30
Speaker 1: a There's two of them. So they said, come in,
41:34
Speaker 1: what key? I said what? I don't know what key?
41:37
Speaker 1: I don't know what key anything is. Normally I had
41:40
Speaker 1: to sing any so I had to go and train
41:42
Speaker 1: to be a castrati in Naples. Is that true? I've
41:48
Speaker 1: had children. I've had children since then at least I've
41:52
Speaker 1: gone through the motions. But no, it was like, okay,
41:56
Speaker 1: sit down and like a cup of tea and here's
42:00
Speaker 1: the song. And I went, well, okay, where's the microphone,
42:03
Speaker 1: where's the reverb, where's the slap back, where's that planty sound,
42:09
Speaker 1: where's the forty five million second delay? Where's my stuff
42:14
Speaker 1: that I lived on? You know, like a guitarist has
42:17
Speaker 1: a pedal. And there was nothing. There was just two
42:18
Speaker 1: couches and an acoustic and we just started muse him,
42:23
Speaker 1: and I felt so exposed and vulnerable. We tried to
42:28
Speaker 1: I think it was Doc Watson's Your Long Journey, and
42:32
Speaker 1: I mean there were harmonies that crossed over and did
42:34
Speaker 1: something else, like like you know, like the Living Brothers
42:38
Speaker 1: or Everly's or whatever. Jesus Christ, how do I get
42:42
Speaker 1: out of here? Now? There must be some burghers here
42:44
Speaker 1: or something. Something's going on somewhere. I could feel the
42:48
Speaker 1: moisture of my brow. But I's got to get out
42:51
Speaker 1: of his place. Anyway, time went on and these guys
42:54
Speaker 1: appeared at the studio. Who I mean. Allison says she
42:58
Speaker 1: never met Jay Belleros before the drummer, and she knew
43:03
Speaker 1: Dennis Crouch the bass player, and Marcaribo. I think these
43:08
Speaker 1: are all sort of, I guess, or running in the
43:12
Speaker 1: same posse as Tebow. And we just started kicking the
43:16
Speaker 1: things around. And so the four tracks came, and the
43:20
Speaker 1: four days came and went, and I got in the
43:22
Speaker 1: car and drove from here down the Natchez Trace, Alabama
43:25
Speaker 1: and through into Clarksdale, Mississippi, to see my friends. I
43:30
Speaker 1: always thought that I had friends in Clarksdale who were
43:33
Speaker 1: actually not there, but they were there because they'd helped
43:36
Speaker 1: me all the way through my life, you know, the
43:39
Speaker 1: musicians and singers and stuff. I wrote a song with
43:42
Speaker 1: Jimmy Carl walking into Clarksdale and the whole litany of that. Lyrically,
43:46
Speaker 1: it's all about that deal. And it's almost like I'd
43:49
Speaker 1: go back to the womb, back to the real mother
43:53
Speaker 1: of the whole thing for me. So I fled to
43:56
Speaker 1: Clarksdale and all the way down I played this CDs
44:01
Speaker 1: in the Crown vic I wow, this is really this
44:05
Speaker 1: is really cooking. I mean, this is like it's sexy
44:10
Speaker 1: in a kind of way that like it. It's not
44:12
Speaker 1: wiggering itself around with flashing lights. It's just it's just good.
44:17
Speaker 1: It's just good. Blew my mind when I heard it.
44:20
Speaker 1: Blew my mind and mine too, because you know, you know,
44:25
Speaker 1: more unlikely what kind of guy I am. This is like,
44:28
Speaker 1: I'm just so excited a bad stuff. I can take
44:31
Speaker 1: a spoonful of something and blow it into some other
44:36
Speaker 1: element of genre, whether it's a piece of Moroccan berber
44:40
Speaker 1: music or whatever it can be. And not being really
44:44
Speaker 1: a musician has helped me in that, you know. But
44:47
Speaker 1: here we are in the kind of font of groove
44:52
Speaker 1: and good taste. And yet we're also in Nashville, which
44:55
Speaker 1: is full of country music, which some of it needs
44:58
Speaker 1: to be taken off and a corner and talk to
45:01
Speaker 1: very severely. You know. Once the country guys started wearing
45:05
Speaker 1: ripped jeans and growing the hairlong, I was able to
45:07
Speaker 1: move around a little easier. But you know what I mean.
45:12
Speaker 1: But it's like, oh, so this thing, this sound came
45:15
Speaker 1: out and Alison and I looked at each other and went, poor,
45:19
Speaker 1: this is unusual, isn't it. And when we started doing
45:23
Speaker 1: things like that rich woman by little Millet, oh god,
45:26
Speaker 1: A will plenty of my and she was right on it,
45:31
Speaker 1: bang as if she'd spent all the time in the
45:34
Speaker 1: French quarter gigging. You know. She was like incredible. I
45:38
Speaker 1: was like, whoa a little boy lost on the hillside here.
45:42
Speaker 1: So that's that's how it started off. The blend of
45:45
Speaker 1: your voice is together. I would have never guessed it
45:48
Speaker 1: would be as magical as it is. But I guess
45:51
Speaker 1: you can never guess. You know, why certain voices blend
45:54
Speaker 1: and it makes a sound that's so specific, and it
45:57
Speaker 1: is so specific in the case of you guys. It's amazing,
46:01
Speaker 1: I know, and there's nothing worse than generalizing about somebody's
46:05
Speaker 1: gift and back there in nineteen seventy seventy one. If
46:10
Speaker 1: I think about the other voice songs like That's the
46:14
Speaker 1: Way or the Rain Song or wherever it might be there,
46:17
Speaker 1: then that voice was always there. But it depends on
46:20
Speaker 1: the melodic request of the song and how much space
46:24
Speaker 1: you've got in within the structure of the lyrical thing
46:28
Speaker 1: to let the voice have its character and put enough
46:34
Speaker 1: compression on it and stuff to make it in your
46:38
Speaker 1: ear rather than down your throat, you know. And I
46:42
Speaker 1: think that these songs, the actual structure or architecture of them,
46:47
Speaker 1: allows the personality of that other voice to work. Yes,
46:52
Speaker 1: and it was time that I made a break. I
46:56
Speaker 1: think you have to take leaps and again, especially as
46:59
Speaker 1: you're not trading on any particular worry about. The only
47:03
Speaker 1: bread you've got to put on the table is the
47:04
Speaker 1: bread within your own spirit. Yes, that's why I'm jet lagged,
47:08
Speaker 1: apau in sitting here talking a lot about I wanted
47:14
Speaker 1: to say your last solo album was incredible as well.
47:17
Speaker 1: It's a it's a beautiful album. And is there anything
47:20
Speaker 1: you do for your voice to keep it? What are
47:23
Speaker 1: the tricks because you consistently sound good. Well, first of all,
47:30
Speaker 1: I have to mean when I'm singing, I write those
47:32
Speaker 1: lyrics and I'm basically made errors. And I was, yeah,
47:37
Speaker 1: I don't know what it was. Really the whole those
47:39
Speaker 1: last two records were really just about basically coming back
47:43
Speaker 1: to somewhere that is so in me, the whole Welsh
47:47
Speaker 1: board of thing, the whole deal of It's not like
47:49
Speaker 1: coming from la It's it's like I was born with
47:53
Speaker 1: half of this history in me, this in my blood.
47:56
Speaker 1: And I had to leave circumstances here in America that
48:02
Speaker 1: was for my definitely for my betterment, and I didn't
48:06
Speaker 1: have the balls to stay and go through the decompression
48:10
Speaker 1: to change completely changed my time, so I went back.
48:15
Speaker 1: So I wrote a lot about the struggle. And I
48:19
Speaker 1: think when you write about something that's absolutely real and
48:22
Speaker 1: affecting your life and affecting the way you sleep, affecting
48:27
Speaker 1: the way that you think, that and your impression of
48:30
Speaker 1: how you are to yourself, you can't be a disappointment
48:33
Speaker 1: to yourself. As a contributor to other people's lives is
48:36
Speaker 1: a tough one. So it was that's Blues in a
48:39
Speaker 1: totally different form. Yes, tell me about your songwriting process.
48:43
Speaker 1: Does it start with music and then melody and then
48:46
Speaker 1: lyrics or is it different different ways? Well, I got
48:49
Speaker 1: a book this morning. I wrote some stuff down. I
48:52
Speaker 1: was listening to BBC Radio four this morning and the
48:57
Speaker 1: guy who runs the British Museum, he has a program,
49:00
Speaker 1: a fifteen minute program, and it's the World in a
49:04
Speaker 1: Hundred Objects, It's called and he was talking about Martin
49:07
Speaker 1: Luther and the Affirmation in Germany, and he was talking
49:10
Speaker 1: about the whole idea of Luther's quill and the very
49:16
Speaker 1: first sort of propaganda to renovate Christianity and get rid
49:22
Speaker 1: of the whole idea of actually paying for absolution, you know,
49:26
Speaker 1: like contributing to like you can skip purgatory if you
49:29
Speaker 1: just put in a few more y yeah, yeah, and
49:32
Speaker 1: all that stuff. And I just shut up immediately, whizz
49:35
Speaker 1: to my book, flipped it over and started writing, because
49:39
Speaker 1: how do I get absolution from my ridiculousness? You know,
49:44
Speaker 1: I like me, you know, i'd actually think I'm really silly.
49:48
Speaker 1: But at the same time, there's some other corners of
49:50
Speaker 1: the to be sorted out, and I think writing, I
49:54
Speaker 1: have this book and I can flip it over. Somebody
49:58
Speaker 1: else's got a groove, I can join it, or I
50:01
Speaker 1: can present a couple of couplets and see what people
50:05
Speaker 1: can do for that. We spend a lot of time
50:08
Speaker 1: in this space. Shifter is thinking about Goreski, the composer
50:14
Speaker 1: from Poland that mournful music and then creating huge blocks
50:20
Speaker 1: of guitar and all that. So, yeah, that's that world
50:25
Speaker 1: over there. And it was good this time because with
50:27
Speaker 1: t Bone I was able to extend that into a
50:32
Speaker 1: what you'd loosely call an original song on the new record.
50:36
Speaker 1: You know, it's just like, hey, that's good. This is
50:39
Speaker 1: a new one, but it's an old theme. Yeah, but
50:42
Speaker 1: maybe that's what Maybe the next Apple will be, all
50:44
Speaker 1: new songs with you and Alison. We were talking about
50:46
Speaker 1: it last night. Yeah, yeah, I think we've got some
50:50
Speaker 1: time in another studio in the next couple of days,
50:55
Speaker 1: and I think Alison might want to put on the
50:59
Speaker 1: Wonder Jackson outfit and see how mean mean man sounds
51:04
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah, she's ready to boom. Is
51:08
Speaker 1: it different singing a cover song or singing your own words?
51:11
Speaker 1: How does it feel different when you're singing of them? Oh? Yeah,
51:14
Speaker 1: it's radically different. How do I feel. I feel like
51:17
Speaker 1: if a song, if you can actually get into the
51:21
Speaker 1: original song and into how it was working. Sometimes, if
51:24
Speaker 1: they're ditties, you have to I consider that the best
51:29
Speaker 1: thing to do is to make them, give them some brevity. Yes. So,
51:34
Speaker 1: for example, a Mel Tillis song stick with Me Baby,
51:37
Speaker 1: was the flip of a heavily track and it was
51:43
Speaker 1: really great guitar sound on that original Warner's release. The
51:48
Speaker 1: electric guitars were great, but by slowing it down and
51:51
Speaker 1: turning it into this sort of love struck pastiche gave
51:56
Speaker 1: it some hootspa, gave it some nerve. Yeah, yeah, gravitas
52:01
Speaker 1: for sure, Yeah, which it didn't have, or which it
52:04
Speaker 1: did have, but within another era. And I think it's
52:07
Speaker 1: about making the journey across the ear with these songs.
52:10
Speaker 1: Otherwise they could end up, you know, like Seannar live,
52:15
Speaker 1: which is nothing wrong with that, that's great, but it's
52:18
Speaker 1: it's had to be something, And especially when you've got
52:21
Speaker 1: these guys grooving around you. Have you ever considered doing
52:24
Speaker 1: an album of popular standards like Willie Nelson did with
52:27
Speaker 1: Stardust anything like that. Definitely not, Although I love Stardust,
52:32
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful song. It's incredible. Are you a Sinatra
52:35
Speaker 1: fan or no? I like what he did, But at
52:38
Speaker 1: the same time, that world there is, it's magnificent within itself.
52:43
Speaker 1: I can't course, and that's phrasing and Nelson riddle and
52:47
Speaker 1: the whole Yeah, but I'm afraid I can't. Really. I mean,
52:52
Speaker 1: this really is the American songbook here, what we've been doing.
52:56
Speaker 1: It's not the kind of schmooze and the stuff that
52:58
Speaker 1: you might hear at you know, when your woman puts
53:02
Speaker 1: on her stilettos, And it's not something where you'd be
53:05
Speaker 1: sitting standing on a porch some fancy club in Chicago's
53:12
Speaker 1: West Side. America has so many more sides to it,
53:16
Speaker 1: and absolutely so I see some of these songs as
53:19
Speaker 1: being the real America. Yes, for me, as an Englishman,
53:24
Speaker 1: that's a bit of a rich thing to say. It's beautiful.
53:26
Speaker 1: It's something beautiful about the romantic vision of a place
53:30
Speaker 1: from an outside perspective that's different than if you grew
53:34
Speaker 1: up in Mississippi. It's just different. You can love it
53:37
Speaker 1: in a different way when you're looking at it from
53:40
Speaker 1: the outside, and there's a romantic vision that doesn't come
53:43
Speaker 1: when you grow up in. It's just a different thing. No,
53:46
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people flinching down there. And I
53:49
Speaker 1: must say that in all the years of traveling through
53:53
Speaker 1: America as a rock and roll sing over the Moroccan Lean,
53:58
Speaker 1: I never really knew any any acre of it at all.
54:02
Speaker 1: I didn't. I thought I had it covered, but I
54:06
Speaker 1: had no idea that every three miles you're another America,
54:10
Speaker 1: or even three hundred yards. So there's no such thing
54:14
Speaker 1: as generalizing. I've been reading travels with Charlie Steinbeck, and
54:18
Speaker 1: of course his vision he was disturbed in nineteen sixty
54:22
Speaker 1: right in that it's very humorous. But then I read
54:26
Speaker 1: this William Leese heat Moon book, The Blue Highways, and
54:31
Speaker 1: are just so impressed by the different cultures and peoples
54:36
Speaker 1: that came through and parked up in different valleys in
54:39
Speaker 1: Kentucky and the whole Appalachia thing. Amazing. Yeah, So the
54:45
Speaker 1: start of playing the addiction, the phrasing of everything. Never
54:49
Speaker 1: mind what happens when you walk down the street and
54:51
Speaker 1: somebody's coming towards you, you know, and you're going but
54:55
Speaker 1: I look at that, I would say that that guy
54:59
Speaker 1: is Russian origin. So you start going wow, when you
55:03
Speaker 1: get up into Oregon and places on that coastline. There
55:07
Speaker 1: you see the effects of the all the people that
55:09
Speaker 1: came around all those years from a different approach to this.
55:13
Speaker 1: To this beautiful country friend who's from the Appalachia region
55:17
Speaker 1: and he was learning to play banjo and they were
55:20
Speaker 1: explaining to him, this is the way we play it here,
55:23
Speaker 1: but if you go three miles that way, this is
55:27
Speaker 1: the lick there. Yeah. And it's and all the songs
55:30
Speaker 1: just like almost like you know, regional accents, right. The
55:33
Speaker 1: same is true with the music community. By community, they
55:37
Speaker 1: have their own sound. Yeah. Yeah, it's it's something else,
55:40
Speaker 1: isn't it. Well, it's a pleasure speaking to you. Thank
55:43
Speaker 1: you so much for doing this, and thank you for
55:45
Speaker 1: making such a beautiful album again. Yeah, well, thank you
55:49
Speaker 1: for getting me up so that I actually have a
55:53
Speaker 1: function today. Otherwise I don't know what i'd do. Yeah,
55:55
Speaker 1: but it's nice to see you. Same. Thanks the Robert
56:00
Speaker 1: Plant for chatting with Rick about his days with Zeppelin
56:03
Speaker 1: and more. You can hear his latest album with Dallison
56:06
Speaker 1: Krauss and all of our favorite songs of his on
56:09
Speaker 1: my playlist at Broken record podcast dot com. Be sure
56:13
Speaker 1: to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com
56:16
Speaker 1: slash Broken Record Podcast, where you can find all of
56:19
Speaker 1: our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at
56:21
Speaker 1: broken Record. Broken Record is produced of help from Lea Rose,
56:25
Speaker 1: Jason Gambrel, Ben Taliday, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez, with
56:30
Speaker 1: engineering help from Nick Chafen. Our executive producer is Emil LaBelle.
56:34
Speaker 1: Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you
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56:55
Speaker 1: us on your podcast that Our theme music's by the
56:57
Speaker 1: Great Kenny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.