Queen Elizabeth II has named Robert Plant for an honorary title, according to reports. Led Zeppelin's former singer was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, or CBE, in a list of honors released today.
He becomes the second member of Led Zeppelin to be named by the queen for a rank in the Order of the British Empire. In 2005, she bestowed a lesser honor upon Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page in 2005, naming him an Officer of the Order of the British Empire, or OBE.
So, Plant has made it onto a list of honorees. The queen names those who are to be given these titles, and there's an actual ceremony held later when the honorees hobnob with the royals. You can just picture this occasion in your mind.
Rarely have people ever refused royal honors. Might Robert Plant become one of them?
Plant has snubbed awards ceremonies in the past, but not showing up to the Grammys when he's been nominated or even guaranteed a Lifetime Achievement Award is one thing. A royal honor is another, and he knows this: He did show up alongside Page and John Paul Jones in Sweden in May 2006 to pick up the Polar Music Award honoring Led Zeppelin. That award comes from the Swedish royals.
Will it be any different when the Queen wants to meet up with Plant and congratulate him firsthand? Plant's not exactly a fan of the Royal Family, and he's made jokes about them in the past. But this may just be the time to swallow hard for a few minutes and go bask in an honor that not everybody gets in a lifetime.
Update, Jan. 7, 2009: Kevyn Gammond, who played guitar in the Band of Joy with Plant and John Bonham in 1966-1968 and then for Priory of Brion with Plant in 1999-2000, says Plant's honor is "very deserved" and "great news." Gammond, who is now a lecturer at Kidderminster College in England and founder of Mighty Atom Smasher (MAS) Records, told hometown paper The Shuttle that Plant "has done a great deal for many charities and organizations."
Update, Jan. 30, 2009: Plant reveals in a new interview why, after sufficient internal debate, he has opted to accept the title bestowed upon him by the queen.
"I still see Jimmy [Page] quite a lot and he's very complimentary and supportive of what I'm doing," Robert Plant now says. "But we are in different places now and you have to go on to do different things." This new remark comes from an interview broadcast live on BBC Radio Wales on Dec. 21.
The singer had recently commented he would start out the new year with some recording sessions with Alison Krauss, intending to make their second album together.
Back in January, even Jimmy Page was giving an impression that the band might be nine months from its first tour in 28 years. Speaking with reporters in Japan, Page spoke of a "parallel project" of Plant's from which he would be freed after the summer.
Undaunted, the rest of Led Zeppelin's would-be members spent part of the year tightening up their act:
John Paul Jones and Page jammed with half of the Foo Fighters at a show in London, letting Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins take turns on drums and lead vocals while they ran through "Ramble On" and "Rock and Roll."
Page, Jones and Bonham rehearsed -- secretly at first, but then disclosing that they were jamming on new material and that they wanted to get an album out once they had the right singer. This revelation seemed to offer Plant assurance that the band would welcome brandishing new Zeppelin material.
But Page insisted Zeppelin would not exist without Plant: "If you're going to do a reunion, you need four members." So all they needed was their singer. An early report that the trio was rehearsing with an unnamed singer was worded to create the illusion that the singer was intended as a mere stand-in for Plant should he choose to rejoin them. They were rehearsing with him in mind but would tour without him if he said no.
And then came the further leaks that named Myles Kennedy and Steven Tyler. Putting names to the rumors added authenticity to them. Long before this week's offer from David Coverdale to sing for their band, some reporters were mentioning Jack White and Chris Cornell. Perhaps the theory was that the more in-demand the singing position in Led Zeppelin was perceived, the more Robert Plant would want it.
But through all this, Plant's concert itinerary with Alison Krauss -- that so-called "parallel project" that loomed from the get-go -- kept piling on through the late summer and deep into September and early October. While it's possible Plant had already made up his mind, he was never quite firm in his public interviews whenever asked about an eventual Led Zeppelin reunion. Everything sounded like we should wait and see.
That was the understanding until toward the end of all the touring, when Plant issued his parting thoughts on the matter: No, he wasn't going to do it. But good luck and best wishes.
That brings us to Plant's comments this week to interviewer Ruth Jones on BBC Radio Wales:
"I'm doing very well with Alison and I'm enjoying that.
"I still see Jimmy quite a lot and he's very complimentary and supportive of what I'm doing.
"But we are in different places now and you have to go on to do different things."
Plant has just spent all year touring and singing concerts, but he swore off all touring for another two years in September when he also put down his foot on Zeppelin activity. Asked about the chances of another Led Zeppelin tour, Plant suddenly alluded to the frailty of his mortal frame at age 60:
"Do you know how long it took me to climb up onto the stage here? And it's only four steps!"
Oh, please! That schtick again? That's so summer of 2007.
No feud between Page and Plant? If I were Jimmy Page, and if I had spent all of 2008 forecasting a Led Zeppelin reunion by year's end, I might be a little angry right about now.
Hopefully, this doesn't mean Page, Jones and Bonham will change their mind about going on the road without Plant and without the Led Zeppelin name. But I guess we will see.
I said back in March, after Plant's alleged rejection of a £100 million offer to reunite with Led Zeppelin, that I hoped Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham "would be able to move on and continue their own careers in a dignified manner if this tour thing doesn't come to fruition." And I also hoped "that they could carry on in whatever capacities makes them happy." I meant it, and I still hope that's what happens.
David Coverdale has recently suggested the style of a Led Zeppelin reunion that he would like to see as a fan of Jimmy Page.
Conveniently enough for Coverdale, his plan of having multiple singers replace Robert Plant includes Coverdale as being one of them. Meaning, he would be able to sing a few songs and then sip tea backstage while somebody else went front and center to tackle other songs.
Essentially, he suggested a Ferris wheel of rock singers and said he'll be in one of the seats.
He also said Def Leppard's Joe Elliott would be up for the job if asked.
Coverdale is quoted in an article by StarPulse that has gotten some real traction on the radio. Apparently, it's pretty amusing to programmers that singers are offering their services to the Led Zeppelin members should they be looking to record an album and a tour.
That alone isn't a horrid proposition. But what jars is the idea of calling whatever results Led Zeppelin.
Come on, can a revolving door of performers sitting in with Page, John Paul Jones and Jason Bonham really be considered Led Zeppelin?
What would all the singers travel in? A clown car?
You can just forget the goal of being tight but loose. Doesn't this just come off as loose but loose?
Don't forget that going out under the name Led Zeppelin without Plant being involved is something Page has said, through his management, his current plans do not include. That would be the case even if Page hit the road with Jones and Bonham, three-quarters of the group that billed themselves Led Zeppelin when playing in London last year.
Still, Coverdale may not be one to play by Page's no-Zeppelin-without-Plant rule. As a previously undiscovered singer in 1973, he first broke into the professional music scene fronting British rock heavy Deep Purple following the departure of Ian Gillan, who had sung on all the band's prior hits including the 1971 smash "Smoke on the Water."
Deep Purple split up two-and-a-half years into Coverdale's tenure with him, after which the singer launched a solo career from which he ultimately formed the band Whitesnake. In the 1980s, the band earned repute for its own version of the faux-sentimental hair-band persona. Coverdale placed himself as an equal to Robert Plant, but the former Led Zeppelin singer chided Coverdale for his lame mimicry of him on Whitesnake songs like "Still of the Night" (see video below). Plant even dubbed him "Coverversion" as the two singers verbally sparred with one another in the press.
Whether or not Coverdale ever was Plant's equal, he sure gave off the impression that he was for a short time in 1993, when he successfully teamed up with Jimmy Page for a full album of new material and a handful of tour dates highlighting the musical past of each.
Although the Coverdale/Page collaboration played out on stages in Japan with their band striving to provide the antidote for Zeppelin-starved fans, the tour did not proceed beyond Japan as planned. Theirs was apparently not a successful enough relationship to stand the test of time, and its existence was completely overshadowed before long, by Page's next project: performing regularly again with Plant for the first time since the Zeppelin breakup of 1980. Their work between 1994 and 1998 was not Led Zeppelin either but, with the participation of its two most visible members, provided both the authenticity and temper the Coverdale/Page unit lacked.
The Page/Plant tours, which leaned heavily on the revered music created in Led Zeppelin, were highly profitable. That had a lot to do with the music, not the personalities. Handing over the Led Zeppelin reins to the man whose Whitesnake fame was based on golden locks, a large ego, and a huge voice with a mouth that won't refrain from cursing? That just won't cut it.
Led Zeppelin was a group of four musicians who bonded to create a unique fifth element. If Page and Jones go into a rehearsal studio with Bonham, their newly indoctrinated drummer, and create some fifth element with another singer and another voice, or multiple singers and multiple voices, it will still be some different fifth element -- not the one that was born in the Gerrard Street room in 1968. It won't be Led Zeppelin. And it shouldn't be called Led Zeppelin.
Queen Elizabeth II has named Robert Plant for an honorary title, according to reports. Led Zeppelin's former singer was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, or CBE, in a list of honors released today.
