23 JUNE 2002: TOURING
WITH BOB LOG III THIS FALL.
ROBERT PLANT – DREAMLAND
– PRESS RELEASE
(June 18, 2002)
Slipping themselves into
the middle of the bill at one of Roger Daltreys Teenage Cancer Trust shows
at the Albert Hall early in 2002, Robert Plant and his new band Strange
Sensation offered a tantalising glimpse of the music theyd been working
up for Plants new album, Dreamland. Demonstrating that classic music can
always breed fresh possibilities, they resurrected a selection of vintage
folk, blues and psychedelic songs, then peeled them open and rebuilt them
using Middle Eastern scales, Asian drones and hard rock. Plant, the tumble-haired
icon from the Led Zeppelin years, stood at the centre of this eclectic
dust-storm like a magician exerting mysterious control over the elements.
“You
can probably hear the great future for this band lurking on the fade-outs
of the tracks,” he says, referring to the 10 pieces he has assembled for
the new album. “For instance, the kind of improvisation at the end of Bukka
Whites “Funny In My Mind (I Believe Im Fixin To Die)”, is the kind of
playing you will experience in a full hour-and-30-minute show. There is
a good communion of souls, theres a lot of great guitar-filigree going
on, not on a blues base but in that kind of Indo-raga style of playing,
somewhere between John Fahey, The Flaming Lips and The Electric Prunes.”
Echoes
of The Cure can be attributed to former Cure guitarist Porl Thompson, who
first signed on with Plant in 1995 when Robert joined up with Jimmy Page
for the No Quarter tour. That project may have helped to inspire the music
Strange Sensation are currently making, since it involved Plant and Page
satisfying their fans insatiable yearnings to hear the Zeppelin catalogue
again, yet in an evolved, expanded form which fired the imagination of
musicians reluctant merely to repeat their past.
“It was
a major moment for me, the No Quarter project,” Plant recalls, “because
it was incredibly stimulating and so moving, and we were able to reinvent
the past without it being a creative millstone.
Plant
has never lost the urge to keep exploring. He takes the view that his past
achievements will always be there for anyone who wants to check them out,
so now he might as well exploit the freedom his successes now afford him.
He doesnt mind ripping everything up and starting again. “My music has
got to be an honest reflection of where Im coming from today.”
Since
the demise of Led Zeppelin in 1980, he has released a sequence of solo
albums which have been frequently impressive and always interesting, not
least 1990s Manic Nirvana or 1993s absorbing Fate Of Nations. His plan
is for a more spontaneous, improvisatory approach. He had to find musicians
who understood where he was coming from, yet also willing to pick up the
ball and run with it to destinations nobody could possibly predict. The
sprinkling of original pieces on the new album are credited to “Robert
Plant and band”, reflecting the power-sharing nature of the relationship.
In addition
to Thompson and his long-serving ally Charlie Jones on bass, he recruited
drummer Clive Deamer (who has run the gamut from Roni Size and Portishead
to Jeff Beck and Dr John), keyboards player and string arranger John Baggott
(an Emmy-winning soundtrack composer who has also put in stints with Portishead,
Massive Attack and Tom Jones), and guitarist Justin Adams, whose own band
The Wayward Sheikhs draws from African and blues sources the perfect
training ground for a stint with the inquisitive Plant.
“Justin
takes away any chance of it being just rock for rocks sake,” Plant enthuses.
Theres
a family history of connections with the Middle East and North Africa.
He plays the ghimbri on “Hey Joe” on the album, its a three-stringed instrument
which changes the whole mood and Justin knows how to play it as its supposed
to be played.”
As for
the choice of material, Plants love of the blues has always been matched
by his enthusiasm for Sixties folk-rock and the multi-coloured experimentation
that was seething through the American West Coast during the psychedelic
era. It was a time when an entire youth culture was up for grabs, and anything
seemed possible. “Youd get amazing bills in those days,” he remembers.
“Youd get Pacific Gas And Electric, Its A Beautiful Day, Jefferson Airplane,
Led Zeppelin, John Lee Hooker and Jerry Lee Lewis for a day. People were
just lying there on the floor and we were a bit of background noise for
their state of mind.”
Arthur
Lee and Love, Tim Buckley, Jimi Hendrix, Moby Grape, Neil Young and Crosby
Stills & Nash have been part of Roberts musical landscape for 30-odd
years, although you wouldnt necessarily be able to tell that from listening
to the Zeppelin catalogue. However “maybe you can hear a little of it in
“Down By The Seaside” or “Going To California”, or “Thats The Way.”
For this
new project, the challenge was to capture the musics original spirit and
build something fresh and unexpected from it. Plant eased himself into
the process gradually. Before Strange Sensation took shape, he tried out
potential material with the enigmatically-named Priory of Brion. This was
a band he put together with his old mate Kevyn Gammond, with whom hed
played in the Midlands-based Band Of Joy alongside drummer John Bonham
in the pre-Zeppelin era. On their own magical mystery tour which took them
from Tromso in Norway to the balmy air of Sardinia, they experimented with
a wide range of material, from Donovans “Season Of The Witch” to Loves
“A House Is Not A Motel”, Dylans “Girl From The North Country” to Neil
Youngs “Southern Man”.
Plant
wanted to avoid huge gigs and superstar expectations. “I just wanted to
take it easy. With no pressure, no road crew to speak of and just kick
back a bit and sing those songs while I could still sing.”
By the
time hed assembled Strange Sensation for some American dates last year,
the picture was becoming clear. US critics noted the way Plant might “engage
guitarist Porl Thompson?in an Arabic-inflected duel of descending scales”
on “Morning Dew”, or deliver “Hey Joe” in “a dramatic funereal reading,
thick with spacey electronic sounds.” Somebody coined the term “cosmic
jukebox” to describe their music, which Robert found pleasingly apt.
Years
ago Plant first met folk singer Tim Rose, co-author of “Morning Dew”, back
in the Band Of Joy days, but his new version of the song seems to loom
out of some prehistoric mist.
Plant
isnt the first artist either to cover Tim Buckleys “Song To The Siren”,
but in collusion with his bandmates he has stretched it into a diaphanous
mirage, hovering in perfumed slow motion. Bob Dylans “One More Cup Of
Coffee” sounds like an Old Testament lament, Plant wearily moaning the
lyric as if he has a thousand miles of burning desert to cross while the
musicians sound as if theyre hallucinating in the heat.
If youre
familiar with Jimi Hendrixs recording of “Hey Joe”, you probably wont
recognize Plants version until you get to the part where the band hurriedly
scribble in the Hendrix riff, just for reference. “Love did it before Hendrix”
Plant points out (and, he might have added, so did The Byrds). But I think
the version of “Hey Joe” that we do is so removed from all the other versions
that its got its own life.”
And there
had to be some blues, though this bunch drag Arthur Crudups “Win My Train
Fare Home” out of the gutbucket and into a laboratory where they stick
electrodes in it and subject it to experiments in modal jazz and ambient
swirls.
“I guess
we can go anywhere we want to go,” Plant ponders. “I dont know whether
theres a place for me within contemporary pop culture or if theres a
place for it in my head now, but I know theres an energy about this music
and a style which is worth pursuing and pushing a bit more. Theres a kind
of musical empathy I havent been aware of for a long time.”
Arthur Magazine 