My life in the shadow of Robert Plant!

My long-standing association with Robert Plant dates back to the summer of 1971 when, as a 13-year-old grammar school boy, doing his best to refuse to get his haircut - and succeeding, I was lent three Long Playing records by Steve Diston, a near neighbour of mine from Stoulton near Worcester. The loan consisted of Led Zeppelin's second album, plus 'The Yes Album', and Cream's 'Wheels of Fire'. This was the first time I'd listened to any LP's other than my personal collection of Beatles and Stones albums. From that day to this, I developed a love for most things 'prog' and some things 'rock'. So, that was my first introduction to Robert Plant - and I can report that to my tender ears, Led Zep II was pretty good in places.

Within a couple of months, I found myself on a family holiday in Majorca, befriending a couple of young, teenage girls - one of whom I'd taken a bit of a shine to. Now, it went and transpired that not only did these two sisters live in a village called Kinver, not too far from my home, near Worcester, but they were also neighbours and friends of Robert Plant! In addition to that, the sisters, Susan and Julie Roberts to be precise, were pupils at the posh private Girls School that actually shared a walled boundary with the Worcester Royal Grammar School for Boys where I was wasting much of my time on a daily basis! "You must come over to see us and meet Robert Plant" said the Roberts sisters to me, but for some reason, I never did. And thus it was that at that time, I didn't get to meet their famous neighbour.

A couple of years later, in 1975, I did get to see Robert Plant, who was performing as a singer in that same rocking rock group, Led Zeppelin. At that time, I was the Vice Chairman of the Worcester Technical College Students Union and had successfully obtained 50 tickets and a coach for a crowd of us to go and see the Zepsters at Earl's Court, in the Australian sector of Londinium. The closest I got to Planty must have been in the region of half a mile away. He certainly didn't get to see me and I'm not sure I actually saw him in real, human form - although there was a large TV screen that assisted people like me, clinging on to the cheap seats at the back of the cavernous hall, to watch him on the telly.

My next close encounter with Robert was during the summer of 1984 when, as luck would have it, I found myself working backstage at a Rolling Stones concert, staged at Ashton Gate football ground in Bristol. During the afternoon, a number of VIPs turned up to hang out with the band before and after the gig. These included Hugh Cornwell of The Stranglers, Valerie Singleton from TV's 'Blue Peter' - who looked hell bent on cosying up with Mick Jagger for a bit of something blue, with or without the Peter. She didn't succeed, despite hours of plugging away. And who else should show up but none other than Robert Plant! I wasn't in position to speak to him - but I was able to watch the Stones gig from the side of the stage. After the show, I spoke briefly with all of the Stones, but still wasn't able to get to speak to Planty.

My next brush with the Plantman occurred in the early 90s. I was then working with some colleagues out of an office in Keynsham, near Bristol. One of my work mates had been a drummer in a semi-professional band - and knew a guy called Dougie Jones who was a bass player on the Bristol scene and who occasionally visited the building where we, and his brother, worked. Amazingly, during this time, Dougie managed to get himself signed up with none other than Robert Plant's new band – and played with them for many years to come. Not only that but he would soon go on to marry Planty's daughter! It goes without saying that I wasn't invited to the wedding.

At some point during the first ten years of the second millennium, I was at Glastonbury Festival with a group of friends, one of whom was Lee Perkins, the excellent guitarist from Scream Tangerine, a band I'd been in during the 90s (https://screamtangerine.bandcamp.com/releases). As often happens with groups of people at a festival, we split up to go and do different things. On this particular night, I ended up back at my tent and got the customary three to four hours sleep one tends to get on a good night at a festival the size of Glastonbury, if you’re lucky. The following morning, I woke up and had to listen to Lee blabbering on excitedly about how I'd ended up missing greatest gig of all time, ever. Somehow, late on the previous evening, he'd got wind that Robert Plant and his new band were playing a 'secret gig' in a far off mystical corner of Glastonbury's amazing moonscape. Whilst that had been happening, I'd been sitting in some hippie tipi, eating fall-apart, drug-free cake, and drinking chai tea, whilst listening to the Incredible String Band being played on a thirty-year-old cassette player. As enjoyable as that had been, it didn't seem to hold a candle to the Misty Mountain Hop that Plant and his band had delivered to the couple of thousand or so lucky punters who'd stumbled across his secret happening. Bugger.

A couple of years later, around 2008, I began to spend more and more time visiting my mate Lol, in Kidderminster, as my marriage had broken down and my job had gone tits up due to the International financial meltdown. We began to jam out a bit of bluesy rocky nonsense on bass and guitar, and subsequently formed a band called The Cream People (https://thecreampeople.bandcamp.com/), a band that probably has two claims to some degree of fame: firstly, we co-composed and recorded around 200 hours of original music. Secondly, despite releasing around 100 tracks on an internet download site, we probably sold the least amount of records ever in the history of recorded music. Anyway, I digress. It just so happened that a local pub, The Queen’s Head, Wolverley, near Kidderminster, became a regular haunt of ours for Sunday lunch and the occasional midweek pint. Loe and behold, guess who was also a reasonably regular drinker in the pub? Well blow me down, it was none other than old Bobby Plant! But he never came in when I was there; bloody typical!

Also, around that time, a couple of my friends, one of them being Lol, went to a Roy Harper gig at the Huntingdon Hall in Worcester. I was unable to make it and so they went without me. They had reserved seats somewhere near the front and when they went to sit down, someone was already sitting in their seats. They tapped the guy on the shoulder to sort the matter out - and who should turn around to face them but Robert bloody Plant! Would you Adam and Eve it! They then had the temerity to turf him out of their seats too!

But it doesn't end there; a few months later, our band, The Cream People, were invited to play at a local fundraising event at Kidderminster Hospital. We agreed to do the gig and practiced our set. It wasn't easy for us, as we normally make music up on the spot, improvising a one-off tune - but we couldn't risk making something up on the spot in front of an audience, in case our inspiration froze. Additionally, neither of us are trained musicians in any way shape or form - we haven't got a clue about musical theory or indeed any of the technicalities relating to chords, scales, and whatever else 'proper' musicians know about. We play by ear and that's that. So, when we arrived at the gig we found that were second on the bill to Robbie Blunt, a man who’d been Planty's guitarist in the band he first formed after Zeppelin split. This was something of a coup to say the least!! We turned up at the gig, bringing with us a small, borrowed, PA system to suit the venue. We were doing our sound-check when Robbie Blunt walked in, carrying just his guitar, no amp, no pedals. He announced that he wasn't going to play a solo slot, instead he was going to plug into our mixer and jam with us for an hour or more. So, we abandoned our whole set, and just jammed off the cuff, blues-rock stuff, to a drum machine - with Lol on bass and myself, Robbie and a third person from the hospital, on guitars. Incredibly, it worked too, but I’d been so flummoxed by the sudden change of plan, that I forgot to press 'record' on our mixer, and also completely forgot to talk to the Blunster about his time with Robert Plant!

A year or so later, Lol and I were in the middle of a Cream People recording session, when we needed to go into Stourport, to Worley's Strings music shop, for some musical supplies. We mooched around in the store for a while and got talking to the owner, Matt Worley. We left him with a rough mix of a 69-minute Cream People track - as he’d seemed interested to hear our band once we'd told him what we were all about.

Months later, Lol returned to the store and found that Matt had loved the cd we'd left him - so much so that he now wanted us to play on the bill of a music festival he was organising in the Stourport area. His friend, none other than Robert Plant, was to be heading the line-up - and not only did Matt want us to be on the bill, he wanted us to be the act that played immediately before Planty's headline slot! We couldn't believe our luck! This was surely the big breakthrough we’d long since stopped dreaming of, and on top of that, it seemed that at last I was going to have that chin-wag with the elusive Mr P! We awaited further news, as Matt himself was waiting for permission for the festival go-ahead to be granted by the local council. Incredibly, the non-go-ahead Stourport Town Council denied permission for the festival and The Cream People headed back into the obscurity of Lol's front room for yet another long-lost recording session.

Over the past ten years, by accident rather than design. I've regularly attended two more locations that Mr P himself frequents reasonably regularly: although he’s a huge Wolverhampton Wanderers football fan, Mr Plant also supports, and attends, Kidderminster Harriers footy club on an occasional basis. Also, my regular drinking haunt in Worcester, The Plough, on Deansway, near the Cathedral, seems to be Mr Plant's favourite Worcester watering hole when he's in town. He's been in on a fair few occasions during the four years since I've been back in the area, but I’ve never got to see him in either Wolverley, Aggborough or the Plough!

The last time I did get to see him was about three years ago, when he and his incredibly psychedelic band of shape-shifters, performed a gig on Cannock Chase, in Staffordshire; but he didn't see me. The set comprised half Zeppelin, half Planty material - and I enjoyed it far more than the 1975 Song Remains the Same special at Earl’s Court.

I've no doubt that, should I be in The Plough when Planty walks in, even if I had the opportunity to speak with him, I probably wouldn't. Just like I hadn't when twice, within a year, I've stood next to Rick Wakeman, another hero of mine, for probably half an hour or more in total. It just didn't seem right butting in and, in any case, what would I have had to say that he hadn't heard a thousand times before? Both Planty and Wakeman seem to have got through life quite successfully - without the requirement of my input, so let them get on with it, I say. I’ll just keep watching from a distance and hope they don’t get themselves into any trouble.

KJF 18/10/2018