Robert Plant embarked upon his September 1985 UK dates still with the cheers from Led Zeppelin's Live Aid reunion in Philedelphia ringing in his ears. Indeed, when acknowledging the crowd reaction to his 'good evening!" greeting in Birmingham, his immediate response was to say "I've heard it louder than that recently". Ouch.
Notwithstanding the fact that the possibility of a full Led Zeppelin reunion was in the air (informal rehearsals with Tony Thompson on drums would be held in early 1986) Plant enthusiastically aired selections from his new album "Shaken 'n' Stirred" to a packed NEC with no Zeppelin covers to be heard. This was a good thing as with his debut album "Pictures At Eleven" he had reached a point that Zeppelin would have probably taken four albums to reach. Each of his subsequent albums had been more left-field than the last.
Plant aired three songs from the new album tonight: "Pink and Black", "Little By Little" and "Too Loud", which featured a spoken word passage (not quite a rap) which seemingly distanced Plant from his past. The last song of the main set was "Slow Dancer" from Plant's solo debut, which is probably the most Zeppelin-like track of his solo career thus far.
If Plant had been in denial about his past with Zeppelin, for the encores he went much further back than that. In 1984, along with Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and others Plant had released a mini LP called "The Honeydrippers: Volume One". This was a collection of 1950s and early 1960s rock 'n' roll covers, and Plant proceeded to dip into this. He was joined by the Kick Horns (who had also played on the LP) and female backing singers in 1950s dresses. To cap it all off behind the band was a backdrop comprising the massive chrome radiator grille of a 1950s car. A sumptious exercise in pure nostalgia.
However, nostalgia is something that Robert Plant has never been about, and this tour proved to be a swan song for his band of the time. The 1986 Led Zeppelin rehearsals proved to be abortive and Plant would return in 1988 with a new album and a new band. Plant gave the audience at this Birmingham NEC a superb demonstration of where he was artistically at that point. However, of all the ex-Zeps, he also showed (and continues to show) that he remains the most true to their ethos of "ever onward".
