Terry
03-17-2006, 11:14 PM
Robert Plant (the_big_log@hotmail.com)
Dear Mr. Prindle,
Usually I do not deign to speak to music critics directly (if I may be so bold as to characterize what you do as actual criticism), but I feel that you have judged me unfairly in regards to my solo career, particularly in the case of my album Shaken N' Stirred.
It is generally assumed by thick-headed rock journalist tossers that Shaken N' Stirred was a crass attempt on my part ot cash in on the New Wave music fad by tailoring my sound in a way that would appeal to a more youthful market, but that is simply not the case. In spite of the image my management had created - that of a Tolkien-esque feudal lord adorned in flowing robs and living in a drafty castle on the moors - I was really quite enamored with the new music being created at the end of the Seventies. I was always nudging the boys in Led Zeppelin forward in an attempt to rouse them from their handlebar mouser and bellbottom doldrums, but they were quite set in their ways by that point and resistant to any kind of change. It was like pulling teeth just to get them to cut their hair and update their wardrobes so that we weren't gadding about stage like a bloody Dungeons & Dragons parody. Jimmy kept bleating about his hair being his bloody "essence" and providing him with certain mystical "powers".
But even with a fresh and modern look on board for the dawn of a new decade, Led Zeppelin was still hopelessly outdated and insignificant by 1979. Jimmy was a hopeless drug addict and would rather stay locked in his room reading obscure occult texts and buggering daft teenage runaways then show up for rehearsal, and Bonzo was a pitiful lush and beyond any salvation whatsoever. Toward the end of the In Through The Out Door sessions we had a child's crib placed in the corner of the studio, and after Bonzo would piss and shit himself - which was happening with more and more frequency - we would chain him in the crib with his ever-present bottle of vodka while we had a studio drummer overdub the parts Bonzo was incapable of playing (if you listen closely to the coda of All My Love, you can hear Bonzo in the background wailing "Peter, I shat myself again!" Alas, this is how I remember poor Bonzo, when I even bother to remember him at all).
Bonzo thankfully died. I wanted to continue on and overhaul our sound completely, but the other tossers - Jimmy and that poof Jonesy - felt that it would be blasphemous to carry on without the dead boozy wanker shitting himself behind the drum kit. Frankly, I was overjoyed to finally be rid of those two arseholes. They were without a doubt the most horrible, cretinous human beings on the face of the Earth.
It was refreshing to work with musicians who weren't closeted bugger boys or conatantly muttering oblique references about Aleistar Crowley, but it seems I had underestimated the shadow of led Zeppelin. No one wanted to see Robert Plant mature as an artist - at least not if it meant he wouldn't be resusitating that horrible piece of shite 'Stairway To Bleedin' Heaven' for the umpteenth time.
I had to fight tooth and nail to get Shaken N' Stirred released, but it was a total labor of love and remains the album of which I'm most proud. When that arse-bandit David Bowie makes a New Wave album people can't bend over fast enough and beg to be buggered by one of his calculated, fey personas, but when Robert Plant does it he's labeled a "sell out" and a "crass opportunist raping the gay music culture"! Piss off, you bloodsucking wankers! This is the music I want to play, not that boring Led Zeppelin shite!
Of course when Shaken N' Stirred was a critical flop, I had to return to making the same boring MOR shite that I've been sqeezing out for the past 40 years. I even had to reunite with that warlock pedophile Jimmy Page just to keep my name in the music press. My management won't let me cut my hair (contractual obligations), so I'm forced to cobble a living out of singing bad rock 'n' roll songs that I despise while looking like a geriatric Cowardly Lion. I hate my life.
And I hate all of you arseholes that still expect me to prance around like a poncy hairdresser while yelping "The Lemon Song" like it's still 1970. I am a grown man, for Christsake! I would rather go back to playing that Honeydrippers shite than play "Kashmir" again.
So judge Shaken N' Stirred harshly if you must, but at least I tried to show you something wonderful and new. And if you really hate it - go buy yourself another copy of Physical Graffiti. It pays my rent.
Robert Plant
Hertfordshire, U.K.
Dear Mr. Prindle,
Usually I do not deign to speak to music critics directly (if I may be so bold as to characterize what you do as actual criticism), but I feel that you have judged me unfairly in regards to my solo career, particularly in the case of my album Shaken N' Stirred.
It is generally assumed by thick-headed rock journalist tossers that Shaken N' Stirred was a crass attempt on my part ot cash in on the New Wave music fad by tailoring my sound in a way that would appeal to a more youthful market, but that is simply not the case. In spite of the image my management had created - that of a Tolkien-esque feudal lord adorned in flowing robs and living in a drafty castle on the moors - I was really quite enamored with the new music being created at the end of the Seventies. I was always nudging the boys in Led Zeppelin forward in an attempt to rouse them from their handlebar mouser and bellbottom doldrums, but they were quite set in their ways by that point and resistant to any kind of change. It was like pulling teeth just to get them to cut their hair and update their wardrobes so that we weren't gadding about stage like a bloody Dungeons & Dragons parody. Jimmy kept bleating about his hair being his bloody "essence" and providing him with certain mystical "powers".
But even with a fresh and modern look on board for the dawn of a new decade, Led Zeppelin was still hopelessly outdated and insignificant by 1979. Jimmy was a hopeless drug addict and would rather stay locked in his room reading obscure occult texts and buggering daft teenage runaways then show up for rehearsal, and Bonzo was a pitiful lush and beyond any salvation whatsoever. Toward the end of the In Through The Out Door sessions we had a child's crib placed in the corner of the studio, and after Bonzo would piss and shit himself - which was happening with more and more frequency - we would chain him in the crib with his ever-present bottle of vodka while we had a studio drummer overdub the parts Bonzo was incapable of playing (if you listen closely to the coda of All My Love, you can hear Bonzo in the background wailing "Peter, I shat myself again!" Alas, this is how I remember poor Bonzo, when I even bother to remember him at all).
Bonzo thankfully died. I wanted to continue on and overhaul our sound completely, but the other tossers - Jimmy and that poof Jonesy - felt that it would be blasphemous to carry on without the dead boozy wanker shitting himself behind the drum kit. Frankly, I was overjoyed to finally be rid of those two arseholes. They were without a doubt the most horrible, cretinous human beings on the face of the Earth.
It was refreshing to work with musicians who weren't closeted bugger boys or conatantly muttering oblique references about Aleistar Crowley, but it seems I had underestimated the shadow of led Zeppelin. No one wanted to see Robert Plant mature as an artist - at least not if it meant he wouldn't be resusitating that horrible piece of shite 'Stairway To Bleedin' Heaven' for the umpteenth time.
I had to fight tooth and nail to get Shaken N' Stirred released, but it was a total labor of love and remains the album of which I'm most proud. When that arse-bandit David Bowie makes a New Wave album people can't bend over fast enough and beg to be buggered by one of his calculated, fey personas, but when Robert Plant does it he's labeled a "sell out" and a "crass opportunist raping the gay music culture"! Piss off, you bloodsucking wankers! This is the music I want to play, not that boring Led Zeppelin shite!
Of course when Shaken N' Stirred was a critical flop, I had to return to making the same boring MOR shite that I've been sqeezing out for the past 40 years. I even had to reunite with that warlock pedophile Jimmy Page just to keep my name in the music press. My management won't let me cut my hair (contractual obligations), so I'm forced to cobble a living out of singing bad rock 'n' roll songs that I despise while looking like a geriatric Cowardly Lion. I hate my life.
And I hate all of you arseholes that still expect me to prance around like a poncy hairdresser while yelping "The Lemon Song" like it's still 1970. I am a grown man, for Christsake! I would rather go back to playing that Honeydrippers shite than play "Kashmir" again.
So judge Shaken N' Stirred harshly if you must, but at least I tried to show you something wonderful and new. And if you really hate it - go buy yourself another copy of Physical Graffiti. It pays my rent.
Robert Plant
Hertfordshire, U.K.