OLD ROCKERS, TAKE NOTE: ROBERT PLANT IS HAVING MORE FUN THAN YOU
Of all the old rock superstars still performing live, Robert Plant seems to be having the most fun. Striding across the stage of the Royal Festival Hall in London on Thursday night, the 77-year-old former Led Zeppelin frontman was so clearly making music for the sheer pleasure it still gives him. But where once he was the self-declared “Golden God”, roaring over the most fearsome heavy rock ever unleashed, now he sings gently to the strains of plucked banjo and wheezing accordion, his voice a soft ache of tone and feeling.
Saving Grace is his latest passion: a band of unstarry yet inventive musicians recruited from his native West Midlands. The backline were all hats and ponytails, serious musos seated among their instruments. Plant’s co-vocalist, Suzi Dian, is a former music teacher he spotted performing with a covers band at a pub in Stourport, Worcestershire. His patronage may have changed her life, but she sings as his equal, often taking the lead, her voice delicate and flowing. The mood is congenial; the impression they give is less of a backing band recruited to make their frontman look good, than of a bunch of jazzers drawing the best out of each other.
The set comprised traditional folk songs and thoughtful covers from the fine Saving Grace album released earlier this year, along with a selection from Plant’s extensive back catalogue (The May Queen, Down to the Sea), and a quartet of mischievous versions of some of Zeppelin’s most delicate numbers: Ramble On, Four Sticks, Friends and The Rain Song. What a feast it was, a fragrant stew of folk, blues, gospel, balladry and psychedelia prepared with delicacy and served with finesse. This is music that ebbs and flows, rises and falls, opening wide spaces then meshing densely together with breathtaking dynamic control.
All the band members played their part: from fantastic drummer Oli Jefferson, playing with restraint but keeping everything moving; to Tony Kelsey, whose electric and baritone guitars were tremulously rich with distortion. Plant was fascinating to watch even when he wasn’t singing, rapt and attentive as if savouring every nuance and flavour.
Like so many of his peers, he could be reliving past glories in the biggest venues on earth, raking in absurd amounts of money in exchange for an approximation of his youthful triumphs. Instead, he keeps finding new ways to renew the intensity of his personal devotion to music. His golden looks may have faded to grey, but Plant is unquestionably one of rock’s immortals.
UK tour continues until Dec 23. For details, see: robertplant.com
2025-12-12T12:00:47Z