(Author's disclaimer: Yes, I know there are problems with verb tenses switching in this essay - I will fix that... eventually... or not!!!)
MY ROBERT PLANT MOMENT
Many months after we attended the 2007 Led Zeppelin reunion concert in London, my husband Gary and I were lucky enough to be T Bone Burnett’s guests at the Robert Plant / Alison Krauss “Raising Sand” concert at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. Gary and T Bone had been meeting over business prospects during the previous months and had become friendly - so we were welcomed onto his tour bus/dressing room prior to the show.
T Bone has a well-deserved reputation and one of the best producers in the music business, but he’s also a fantastic guitarist and was playing in the band for the tour. He looks like a southern gentlemen from some bygone era, a riverboat gambler... Tall and fair, with a southern drawl and a laconic way of speaking, he has this wonderful out-of-the-past presence about him. His knowledge of arcane music history is mind-boggling. We were having a great conversation with him when there came a knock on his tour bus door, and who should pop in with a “Hello, Henry!” -- but Robert Plant. (T Bone’s birth name is Joseph Henry Burnett).
Having spent decades working (and playing!) around the film and music businesses, I am not easily impressed by celebrity. I rarely get nervous. I don't confuse talent with character, and I have many famous friends and acquaintances: Emmy, Oscar and Grammy winners, and a good smattering of Rock & Roll Hall of Famers among them. But c’mon, this is Robert Plant! For most women of a certain age, there is no way to avoid experiencing heart palpitations when he enters the room - or in this case, the very close confines of an over-air-conditioned tour bus.
The golden god himself comes in and seats himself on the forward bench across from my husband, just diagonal from where I am perched. He is wearing cowboy boots... that much I remember. The rest is something of a blur. He is charming and funny. My husband Gary reminds him that they have met before when Gary arranged for his company to sponsor the Page/Plant Unledded and No Quarter tours. Plant graciously says of course he remembers Gary. If he doesn’t, he’s covering well. I have had my photo taken with him and Jimmy at cattle calls backstage before various shows, but there is no reason he should recognize me, nor does he appear to. I am just one more aging blonde in a never-ending sea of aging blonde fans.
There’s a great deal of gray mixed in with his own blonde hair now, and there are sizable bags under those blue-green eyes... eyes that so many girls teenage girls dreamed of gazing into (OK, I'll admit it, myself included). Plant does not appear to be one of those skin-cream-slathering metrosexual rockers who fight the aging process. He’s grizzled, he’s weathered, his face and body are lived-in. What could be more sexy? There are still strong traces of his black country roots in his reedy voice. There's no arrogance about him on this bus. He's a man who is comfortable with who and where he is.
Uncharacteristically for me, I sit quietly. I'm not really nervous, but I don't want to just blither either. I mostly listen to the chit chat between T Bone, Plant, and T Bone’s lovely lady-friend (now wife), the Oscar-winning writer (Thelma and Louise!) and director, Callie Khouri, who frequently comes and goes from the bus, as she is apparently tending to other guests backstage. (How did we get so lucky as to be the ones on the bus?!!) Gary and T Bone and Robert Plant start discussing sleep problems they are all experiencing as they age. They decide they should all go to a sleep clinic one of them knows about. (For years to come, Gary will jokingly tell people, “Robert Plant asked me to sleep with him!”). They are talking like a bunch of old guys and I can hardly stand it. I want to shout, “NO! Stop this geriatric talk... you are Robert Plant!"
I want to jump into the conversation, not to actually say that, but because there is something else I feel compelled to tell Plant. When there is a lull, I take my chance and say, “I just wanted to tell you that we were at the reunion show at the O2 and it was one of the greatest nights of my life.” Plant lets out an exasperated sigh. No, “Oh, thank you, yes, that was an extraordinary evening, wasn’t it?” Instead he grumbles something about being unhappy about having done the show. I plow on, “Well I thought it was fantastic. We got to take our 13-year-old son with us and none of us will ever forget it.” Gary chimes in with more positive feedback on just how amazing the concert was for everyone there. But Plant is not swayed from his negative tone: “Well, it brought out all of the carnival barkers, didn’t it? Now everyone is insisting we tour.” Ah, so that’s what it’s about. Other band members and all of those who serve to benefit from the HUGE income such a tour would bring have not stopped pressuring Plant, the hold-out, about cashing in. He goes on to tell us something to the effect of (it’s been awhile since this conversation took place, so I can’t be sure this is what was said verbatim!): “I am not 23 anymore! I can’t do that every night.” He tells us that a special bass had to be made for John Paul Jones so Plant could sing in a lower key. But I sense that it’s not just that it’s hard for Plant to hit all the notes anymore. My impression is that he doesn’t want to be bored doing the same thing and he doesn’t want to make a fool of himself or Zeppelin. Plant wants to leave the band’s legacy intact.
He grouses a bit more, then says, “well, but there was one thing...” And he proceeds to tell me a story I will not soon forget. (I check the details out later with former Zeppelin tour manager, Richard Cole, who happens to be one of my closest friends. Yes, that Richard Cole, the notorious instigator of many of Zeppelin’s most outrageous antics back in the day. He’s a pussycat now, clean and sober many years, and I proclaim my affection for him proudly.)
The story Plant tells me - paraphrased from memory, of course - is this: “One of my best mates was really ill...” Plant’s friend was dying. When Jimmy Page broke a finger and the concert date had to be moved back by several weeks, this great pal of Plant’s managed to hang on. Plant recounts what happened: for the day of the show, December 10, 2007, he arranged for a couple of male nurses to watch over this friend. (Richard Cole later tells me that, in fact, it’s his understanding that the man was so ill Plant had to have him flown in by Medivac helicopter ambulance). They set this pal of Plant’s up next to the sound board. After the show, the nurses both handed Robert Plant back their paychecks. The conversation, as best I can recall Plant relating it, went like this: “We can’t take this money from you.” And Plant says, “oh, you enjoyed the show that much?” And the nurses say, “Well yes, the show was great, but more than that, watching your friend watch you up there on stage was a priceless experience for us. To see the joy he felt watching you up there was something we will never forget. We can’t take your money."
So here I am, a middle-aged fan of this aging rock god, sitting on a tour bus, frozen, rapt, while Robert Plant recounts this truly extraordinary tale - and of course my eyes are welling up already - and then Plant says, “and he died just a short time later.”
I have tears brimming in my eyes - and this is when I have “my Robert Plant moment” ... I lean forward toward him and say, “look, I don’t know you... so I hope it’s not too presumptuous of me to say this: Maybe THAT is why you did the concert. For your friend.” Plant locks eyes with me, and seems to consider this concept for a brief instant. He gives me slight smile and a nod of his head... and then the moment is over. He soon leaves the bus, and Gary and I follow shortly thereafter.
The Raising Sand concert was wonderful, truly memorable, filled with a lightness and subtlety not often associated with the Plant of Zeppelin days. But the music is not what I recall when I think back on that night.
Robert Plant may not remember a single bit of this non-event in his life, this little conversation -- with people whose names he may never remember -- on his friend “Henry’s” tour bus, but of course I will never forget it. The love and devotion he showed to a desperately ill friend humanized him and forever endeared him to me.
In the midst of the enormous pressure that came with mounting a massively hyped reunion concert the whole world was bound to be fixated on, he took the time and effort to do an incredible thing to bring joy to the last days of a dying man’s life... THAT's a rockstar move.
