March 30, 2013<\/p>\n
Old Graft, Green Shoots<\/p>\n
Robert Plant
\nAdelaide Entertainment Centre
\nMarch 26.<\/p>\n
Murray Bramwell<\/p>\n
What do you do when you have already climbed the stairway to top-of-the-charts heaven, when you have hopped to the top of the misty mountain\u00a0 ? \u00a0As part of Led Zeppelin, one of the most successful rock bands of all time, what was lead singer, Robert Plant, going to do when it was over ?<\/p>\n
After the sudden death of drummer John \u201cBonzo\u201d Bonham , Led Zeppelin disbanded in December 1980. They were the second highest selling band in US music history, shipping somewhere between 200 and 300 million records (all albums, they refused to release singles).\u00a0 They epitomised mega rock. Plant and guitarist Jimmy Page were the prototype poodle rock stars – big hair, big egos and a gigantic, carefully constructed sound that, quite literally, altered the sound of everything that followed.<\/p>\n
They were credited with inventing, or at least perfecting, the music known as hard rock. They set in motion the relentless 40 year flow of heavy metal \u2013 now fragmented into such metallurgical sub-sets \u00a0as thrash, death, nu and metalcore.\u00a0 And when the form was lampooned in the brilliant mockumentary, \u00a0Spinal Tap<\/i>, it was Plant and Page who looked like prime suspects.<\/p>\n
But for all the pyrotechnics and foppish strutting, Led Zeppelin \u2018s music was far more, as we say nowadays – nuanced. The acoustic layering, the melodic light and shade, the romantic, bardic lyrics, were more like that of folk rock. Not surprisingly – since Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones both played on such acid folk classics as Donovan\u2019s Sunshine Superman. <\/i>Nor should it be forgotten that it was Robert Plant who, encouraging the band to retreat to the remote Welsh cottage known as Bron-Yr-Aur, wrote lyrics laced with references to Celtic mythology and JRR Tolkien. He even had a dog named Strider.<\/p>\n
In a long and varied solo career Robert Plant has traversed both familiar \u00a0rock territory (with albums such as Now and Zen<\/i> and Manic Nirvana<\/i>), and the other road \u2013 acoustic folk and world music influences \u2013 as in the under-rated\u00a0 Fate of Nations<\/i> and Dreamland, <\/i>albums full of Plant originals as well as covers of Tim Hardin, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, Tim Buckley and Moby Grape\u2019s Skip Spence. Equally inspired (and far more celebrated ) was Raising Sand, <\/i>\u00a0his 2007 collaboration with country singer Alison Krauss which gathered plaudits, Grammys and a whole new audience for his grainy vocal harmonies and Wolverhampton-Nashville sensibility.<\/p>\n
On tour in 2013 with his Sensational Space Shifter Band, with a line-up (and setlist) not too different from his 2006 Strange Sensation travelling \u00a0players, Robert Plant is a musician with nothing left to prove. He has nibbled more forbidden fruit than almost anyone in the later 20th<\/sup> century, he made money when managers like Zep\u2019s Peter Grant reversed the flood of profits back to the bands, he has continued to make terrific music and, apparently, can take or leave offers such as the rumoured quarter of a billion dollars waved under the noses of the three surviving Led Zeppelin members to take on a world tour and fight one last battle of Evermore.<\/p>\n On stage this week at the Entertainment Centre, Robert Plant is relaxed and roguishly affable. He once looked like a Botticellian angel or a pre-Raphaelite prince. Now, with his long, crimped straw-coloured hair and Vandyke beard, he could be a Cavalier survivor from the court of James II. He is almost 65, and looking wrinkly – but every line in his face is a smile. He is charming from the first note, hunched over the microphone ready to release that big voice \u2013 now \u00a0half an octave lower, perhaps – to an audience enthralled just\u00a0 to lay eyes on him.<\/p>\n He opens with Heartbreaker<\/i> \u2013 from Led Zeppelin II<\/i> . The vocals are wrapped in echo and reverb and the lyrics register as fragments \u2013 \u201c\u2026see how the fellas lay their money down \u2026another guy\u2019s name when I try to make love to you\u2026Give it to me\u2026Go away, Heartbreaker. \u201c The vocals are enveloped in the heavy rhythm sound of the Space Shifters \u2013 woozy, hypnotic\u00a0 keyboards, percussive drumming and thrumming guitar. No screaming Fender Telecaster\u00a0 leads , instead, an insistent, brooding bass and thud.\u00a0 Plant segues into Tin Pan Valley<\/i>, its scathing satire on the life of retired celebrity mostly lost in the mix while everyone gets their bearings.<\/p>\n It is the opening lines of Ramble On<\/i> \u2013 \u201cLeaves are falling all around. It\u2019s time I was on my way \u2026\u201d that registers with the crowd and the set begins to find its thread. Plant greets the punters and in his clipped, not-very-Midlands-anymore accent, announces Another Tribe<\/i>. Guitarist Justin Adams lays out his acoustic riff, John Baggott generates the squelchy keyboards and Plant glides and sashays, upending the mike stand and expertly pitching his trademark vocals. He is a cool performer- no unbecoming Jaggerisms here. He is circumspect and restrained in his moves; \u00a0it is like a courtly dance – all bows and scrapes and the gentlest self-irony. \u00a0He is delivering the goods and having fun but nobody is pretending it\u2019s 1974.<\/p>\n Blues music was always central to Led Zeppelin, as to the Yardbirds, Stones, Animals and others who preceded them. On stage Plant invokes the names of Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson and the sixties blues revival performers Son House and Skip James. He describes them as Black Angels and muses on the fact that he is now the age they were when they were re-discovered and returned to the concert circuit.<\/p>\n He doesn\u2019t mention Willie Dixon whose family sued Zeppelin for its wholesale appropriation of his tunes and lyrics and were meagrely compensated in an out-of-court settlement. The Space Shifters chug into one of his most famous compositions all the same. Spoonful<\/i> – and it is one several highlights of the night.\u00a0 West African musician Juldeh Camara joins the band onstage reminding us perhaps that the blues didn\u2019t originate in the Delta but came from the continent where so many Africans were captured and transported. Camara adds his ritti, a single stringed African violin, to the insistent Spoonful<\/i> riff and later in the extended jam, \u00a0Liam \u201cSkin\u201d Tyson\u2019s spicy guitar \u00a0is replaced by Camara\u2019s \u00a0distinctive kologa \u2013 an African form of the banjo.<\/p>\n A cluster of big hits follows. \u00a0Black Dog,<\/i>\u00a0 with its instantly recognisable opening chords and\u00a0 blues bragger lyrics \u2013 \u201cHey mama, said the way you move, gonna make you sweat, gonna make you groove\u2026\u201d The band are in full form \u2013 but the force is in the drum and bass (the excellent Dave Smith and Billy Fuller) and, as in many songs, with bodhran, inventive keyboard fills\u00a0 and acoustic guitars. There are intense bursts of electricity from Tyson, \u00a0but the effect is of thunderous skiffle. It is reminiscent of Bob Dylan\u2019s electric string band from the Modern Times<\/i> tour.<\/p>\n Not everyone is well pleased. Someone in the row behind me laments the absence of Jimmy Page. Certainly, there is none of his brilliant guitar flash, delivered as he languidly slouches against the Marshalls, lips curled into that Aleister Crowley sneer. But these Space Shifters have shape-shifted an old song and refreshed it – as they do, with Justin Adams on mandolin, in the melodic reading of Going to California<\/i> that follows.<\/p>\n The Enchanter<\/i> (from the aptly named Mighty Re-Arranger<\/i> album) is given a fine stretch \u2013 the music wafting and beguiling, Plant at his most relaxed, crooning and keening as only he can. It is back to the blues with an extended version of Bukka White\u2019s hell-hounded lament, Fixing to Die,<\/i> and then the band steps up another level to fill the roof with Whole Lotta Love<\/i> – in medley with the Bo Diddley classic Who do You Love<\/i> ?<\/p>\n For the encore it is Bron-Yr-Aur Stomp<\/i> and, with Plant\u2019s amiable intro \u2013 \u201cHere is the answer to all things complicated : Simple !\u201d \u2013 it is one last go-round with Rock and Roll<\/i>. \u201cCarry me back, baby\u2026it\u2019s been a long time, been a long time. \u201c Yes, it has, and the faithful old trolls, as he jokingly called his sit-down audience, needed to hear the old refrains. However, Robert Plant and his Sensational Space Shifters not only gave us things borrowed and blue, they were also unexpected and refreshingly new.<\/p>\n murraybramwell.com<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" March 30, 2013 Old Graft, Green Shoots Robert Plant Adelaide Entertainment Centre March 26. Murray Bramwell What do you do when you have already climbed the stairway to top-of-the-charts heaven, when you have hopped to the top of the misty mountain\u00a0 ? \u00a0As part of Led Zeppelin, one of the most successful rock bands of all time, what was lead singer, Robert Plant, going to do when it was over ? After the sudden death of drummer John \u201cBonzo\u201d Bonham […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,5,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-24","category-archive","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1933"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1933\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1935,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1933\/revisions\/1935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/murraybramwell.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}