Robert Plant and how Tolkien influenced him in Led Zeppelin

Robert Plant was recently a guest of Stephen Colbert on his “Late show” and had the opportunity to tell – among other things – how the charm of Wales and the magic of JRR Tolkien have influenced his writing in the Led Zeppelin era. The singer-songwriter explicitly cited symbols, places, characters or other aspects taken from the works of the British writer of “The Lord of the Rings”. “Twas in the darkest depths of Mordor / I met a girl so fair / But Gollum and the evil one / Crept up and slipped away with her”, is – for example – a passage from the lyrics of “Ramble Hon“. The song “Misty Mountain Hop“, contained in fourth studio album of the legendary British band, which celebrated its 54th anniversary yesterday – November 7th (read more here), refers instead to the Misty Mountains of Tolkien’s imagination and includes some references to “The Hobbit”.

During his appearance on the “Late Show With Stephen Colbert”, Plant explained that it was his parents who passed on to him the love for Tolkien’s books and stressed: “I blame my mother and my father. There’s a kind of fusion in there.” Jokingly, the 77-year-old musician then said of feel like a member of the “Inklings”the famous group of British writers – including Tolkien and CS Lewis – who met in Oxford pubs in the 1930s and 1940s. During the chat with Colbert, Plant then shared his nerdy enthusiasm for Tolkien’s writingadmitting that his bandmates in Led Zeppelin didn’t have a clue that he was inserting references to “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” into the lyrics of their songs. During the interview, the artist stated:

“Tolkien was a master. He opened the door to all that wandering in dark age history.”

Stephen Colbert’s guest, Robert Plant then pointed out that Tolkien’s childhood in the West Midlandsalong with his love for Welsh culture, he has always linked him sentimentally to the writer having spent much of his youth in the English county, in the vicinity of which he has now returned to live, and in Wales. The singer-songwriter narrated: “Tolkien spoke to mebecause its points of reference were very close to where I live. Very close to places where my parents, without knowing it, took me as a childthrough landscapes where you found yourself immersed in another culture that is still alive; places where you could read, in the landscape itself, what came from ancient times, before highways and things like that came along. It’s something very evocative, and I think Tolkien understood that completely.” He added: “It’s really extraordinary that there can be a culture pushed towards the western side of England and it has absolutely nothing to do with the English. The Welsh are British. And so, the union of all the legends, the space travels and all that world… it’s there, 15 miles from my house. You can feel it all.”

Last September 26th Robert Plant released the album “Saving Grace” (here is our review), the first album he made with the band Saving Grace. Together with the project that sees him on stage together with Suzi Dian, Oli Jefferson, Tony Kelsey and Matt Worley, Plant also returned to perform in Italy last July for a date at Lucca Summer Festival.