Even though Robert Plant performs a few of Led Zeppelin‘s old songs at his solo concerts, the singer recently told Mojo why he won’t sing many of the band’s biggest “hits.”
“What were the hits?” he asked the magazine in a new interview. “How can they be related to now? Where do they fit? They fit as a sort of memoir.
“When people say that I don’t like ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ I just don’t like the idea of it,” he continued. “These iconic things – they’re just what they are. But you know, most people have missed some of the best Zeppelin stuff. ‘For Your Life’ on Presence. ‘Achilles Last Stand’! Fucking hell. Just extraordinary that three people and a singer can do that.”
READ MORE: Every Led Zeppelin Song Ranked
Plant will release his new album, Saving Grace, on Sept. 26. The LP is named after his current backing band, which recently wrapped up a European tour and will play their first North American concerts starting in October. You can see the tour dates below.
Saving Grace’s shows have included Zeppelin’s “Friends,” “Four Sticks” and “The Rain Song” in their sets. But Plant said he has no interest in playing the band’s best-known songs and getting back together with the surviving bandmates after their one-time 2007 reunion at London’s 02 Arena for a tribute to Atlantic Records’ Ahmet Ertegun.
“To do it for the sake of it was never what Zeppelin was about,” he said. “And the tribute to Ahmet, it came through. You know, without John” — Bonham, the drummer who died in 1980 and led to the band’s split — “but it came through. It was a good study. The smell of fear on that stage was quite remarkable. Because we’ve been shambolic at times, and great other times. That’s how it should be if you’re taking risks like that.”
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Plant was absent from July’s farewell concert by Black Sabbath, even though guitarist Tony Iommi invited him to participate in the Back to the Beginning show, singer Ozzy Osbourne‘s final performance before his death on July 22.
“I said, Tony, I’d love to come, but I can’t come,” Plant noted. “I just can’t. I’m not saying that I’d rather hang out with Peter Gabriel or Youssou N’Dour, but I don’t know anything about what’s going on in that world now, at all. I don’t decry it, I’ve got nothing against it. It’s just I found these other places that are so rich.”
That’s one reason he’s taking Saving Grace to smaller venues rather than the larger stadiums. “The gigs are small enough so that if nobody wants to go, it’s not the end of the world,” he said.
“For me, because I’ve been from a very questionable Live Aid to the O2, to Obama and the White House and all those things, I was beatified,” he noted. “I felt the tug of doing this – Saving Grace needed just to move on up in glory. We’ve got to be very careful now that we make sure it stays closer to Bert Jansch than Axl Rose.”
Robert Plant & Saving Grace Tour Dates
October 30 – Wheeling, WV – Capitol Theatre Wheeling
November 2 – Charlottesville, VA – The Paramount Theater of Charlottesville
November 3 – Washington, DC – Lincoln Theatre
November 5 – Brooklyn, NY – Brooklyn Paramount
November 6 – Boston, MA – Boch Center Shubert Theatre
November 8 – Port Chester, NY – Capitol Theatre
November 10 – Toronto, ON – Massey Hall
November 12 – Chicago, IL – The Vic
November 13 – Chicago, IL – Old Town School of Folk Music
November 15 – Denver, CO – Ellie Caulkins Opera House
November 18 – Seattle, WA – The Moore Theatre
November 19 – Vancouver, BC – Vogue Theatre
November 21 – Oakland, CA – The Fox
November 22 – Los Angeles, CA – United Theater on Broadway
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Gallery Credit: Michael Gallucci
