Robert Plant: A Life

by Paul Rees

Overview

This biography of the solo artist and legendary lead singer of Led Zeppelin “informs and entertains . . . leav[ing] few stones in Plant’s life unturned.” —Mojo magazine

Robert Plant by Paul Rees is the definitive biography of Led Zeppelin's legendary frontman. As lead singer for one of the biggest and most influential rock bands of all time—whose song “Stairway to Heaven” has been played more times on American radio than any other track—Robert Plant defined what it means to be a rock god.

Over the course of his twenty-year career, British music journalist and editor Paul Rees has interviewed such greats as Sir Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Bono, and AC/DC. Rees now offers a full portrait of Robert Plant for the first time, exploring the forces that shaped him, the ravaging highs and lows of the Zeppelin years—including his relationship with Jimmy Page and John Bonham—and his life as a solo artist today.

Illustrated with more than two dozen photographs, Robert Plant: A LIfe is the never-before-told story of a gifted, complicated music icon who changed the face of rock 'n' roll.

“Anyone seeking insight into Robert Plant as a man and musician will find it here.” —Q Magazine

“Particularly enlightening on Plant’s formative pre-Zep years in the Midlands, A Life puts the singer’s eclectic career into clear context.” —Dave Lewis, Tight But Loose magazine

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062281401
Publisher:	HarperCollins Publishers
Publication date:	11/21/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	389
Sales rank:	281,655
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

Paul Rees has written about music for more than twenty years. He has interviewed everyone from Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, and Madonna to Bono, Take That, and AC/DC. His work has appeared in many publications, including the Sunday Times Culture, the Telegraph, the Independent, and the Evening Standard. He was also editor of two of the UK's most successful and long-standing music publications, Q magazine and Kerrang!, for a total of twelve years. He lives in England.

Table of Contents

Encore 1

Part 1 Beginnings

1 The Black Country 9

2 The Devil's Music 24

3 King Mod 35

4 The Rubber Man 48

5 The Real Desperation Scene 63

Part 2 Airborne

6 Boom! Boom! Boom! 83

7 Valhalla 102

8 Blond Elvis 117

9 Sodom and Gomorrah 132

10 Crash 149

11 Darkness, Darkness 164

12 The Out Door 182

Part 3 Solo

13 Exorcism 201

14 Sea of Love 217

15 Tall Cool One 230

16 Crossroads 246

17 Good Times, Bad Times 256

18 Down from the Mountain 273

19 Rebirth 285

20 Gone, Gone, Gone 295

21 Joy 310

22 Coda 322

Acknowledgments 333

Sources 337

Index 341

Editorial Reviews

11/11/2013
The mystique surrounding 65-year-old Robert Plant—a man who reimagined the role of rock star while in Led Zeppelin—makes it nearly impossible to write the singer's first comprehensive biography, and an unauthorized one at that. British veteran music journalist Rees attempts to find a balance between the man, the myth, the music, and the darkness, but he ultimately delivers a piece of general reportage with intermittent moments of drama and clarity. The one-time editor of Kerrang! and Q magazines gleaned details from other books and articles, as well as his own previous conversations with Plant and many of Plant's former classmates, band mates, and tour mates—some who weren't afraid to speak candidly and critically. Even as a mischievous English grammar-school student, Plant had the talent and looks that eventually propelled him to self-described "golden god" status. He sang in regional bands before guitarist Jimmy Page recruited him for a new group that became Led Zeppelin. Groupies, drugs, and tragedy followed as Zeppelin's legend grew. The band dissolved after drummer John Bonham's death in 1980, and Plant reemerged as an ever-evolving solo artist who kept his distance from Zeppelin, rarely reuniting with his former band mates. This book is billed as the singer's definitive story, but that will remain untold until Plant writes it himself. Agent: Matthew Hamilton, Aitkin Alexander Associates. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

Rees informs and entertains . . . leav[ing] few stones in Plant’s life unturned. — MOJO

Anyone seeking insight into Robert Plant as a man and musician will find it here. — Q Magazine

Particularly enlightening on Plant’s formative pre-Zep years in the Midlands, A Life puts the singer’s eclectic career into clear context. — Dave Lewis, Tight But Loose magazine

From the Publisher

Particularly enlightening on Plant’s formative pre-Zep years in the Midlands, A Life puts the singer’s eclectic career into clear context.

Dave Lewis

Rees informs and entertains . . . leav[ing] few stones in Plant’s life unturned.

MOJO

Anyone seeking insight into Robert Plant as a man and musician will find it here.

Q Magazine

2013-11-13
By-the-numbers biography of the shaggy rocker. Unfortunately, former Q and Kerrang! editor Rees hits nearly every rock-bio cliché. As his yarn opens, we find an aging Plant, frontman of Led Zeppelin, world-weary, "the weight of history pressing down upon him; the burden of all the demons he had come here to put to rest at last." Then the perfunctory career review begins: Midlands boy grows up in a bombed-out, gritty industrial landscape, the child of music-loving (but classical music, mind you) parents, hears Elvis--and, more to the point, Bill Haley and His Comets--and is turned into a faux American. As Rees rightly notes, Plant, initially known in Britain as the hippie's hippie, is a shrewd and bookish fellow who refuses to be pinned down. He made his fortune as a singer of heavy rock, but, as folk-rock idol Roy Harper says, "Robust Planet" was smart not to do the same old rock thing in the 30-odd years post-Zep, instead searching endlessly on the musical horizon for the next thing to do. (The current next thing is a blend of Middle Eastern and Americana, a pleasingly contradictory sound.) Plant, who at 65 "is now eligible for a bus pass and a state pension" in Britain, is a serious enough musician to warrant a serious biography, though perhaps it's payback for thudding anthems like "Kashmir" and "Immigrant Song" to have a life story clotted with thudding prose along the lines of "His path was set," "In many respects 1965 was to be a pivotal year," and "He heard the screams, smelt the sex and sensed the power that could be bestowed upon the man with the microphone." For die-hard fans only. Zeppelin fanatics will want to turn to Stephen Davis' hoary Hammer of the Gods (1985), which, though covering only the band and not Plant's solo decades, isn't as painful to read.

Kirkus Reviews