Hosted on a ‘Digging Deep’ podcast episode, aired on May 24th, legendary Led Zeppelin frontman has stated that he assembled his personal archive during lockdown, but he has no plans to release them if not after his death. The items include cassettes containing a wide range of recordings of abandoned projects, personal papers – including a family note sent to him soon after he decided to undertake singing as a professional career: ‘I found a letter from my mom that said, ‘Look, you’ve been a very naughty boy. Why don’t you come back?’
‘And also, the accountancy job is still open on Stourport-on-Severn … [so] why don’t you just come back home and we’ll pretend all this stuff didn’t happen?’ he added. Plant did not find the letter until a few months ago: ‘it made me feel crazy because I thought about what a pitch it was in those days to chuck everything up in the air and just say, ‘Sorry, I’ve got to this,’ and for them to throw the next card down and say, ‘Well, if you do it, you can’t come back here and live the live you wanna live. It’s academia or you’re out.’ So I went. … I only went back, really, when I got engaged. … I went back and introduced my future ex-wife.’
Zeppelin singer confessed that he spent lockdown ‘in Worcestershire, Shropshire, the Welsh borders; just walking, painting, drawing’. By being forced to stay at home, he had plenty of time to put his house in order: ‘All the adventures that I’ve ever had with music and tours, album releases, projects that didn’t actually get finished or whatever it is — I just put them, itemised them all, and put everything into some semblance of order. So I’ve completely changed the set-up.’
However, these items will only see the light of day after Plant’s passing: ‘I’ve told the kids when I kick the bucket, open it to the public free of charge — just to see how many silly things there were down the line from 1966 to now. It’s a journey.’ For the time being, Robert Plant will headline this year’s Black Deer Festival in Kent.
