Robert Plant Sitting on Trove of Unreleased Music He Recently Catalogued
Robert Plant has kept himself busy during the COVID-19 pandemic with various artistic pursuits. But the unusual amount of free time away from the road or studio has also found the former Led Zeppelin singer, solo artist and frequent collaborator doing something else — reorganizing his archives.
However, in a new installment of Plant's Digging Deep podcast, the first episode of 2021, Plant suggested that he may not share all of the unreleased material he possesses until after his death — a directive he's made clear among his children.
Telling Digging Deep co-host Matt Everitt how he's spent the last year or so "in Worcestershire, Shropshire, the Welsh borders; just walking, painting, drawing," the veteran rocker summarized his archival project.
"I started putting my house in order," Plant revealed. "All the adventures that I've ever had with music and tours, album releases, projects that didn't actually get finished or whatever it is — I just put them, itemized them all, and put everything into some semblance of order. So I've completely changed the setup."
He added, "I've told the kids, when I kick the bucket, open it to the public free of charge — just to see how many silly things there were down the line from 1966 to now. It's a journey."
But the Robert Plant Archive isn't just music. It also contains mementos such as a note from the singer's mother, written when Plant was with Led Zeppelin, urging him to come home and get a proper job.
"[I] found a letter from my mom that said, 'Look, you've been a very naughty boy, why don't you come back?'" the rocker relayed. "'And also, the accountancy job is still open in Stourport-on-Severn, and why don't you just come back home and we'll just pretend all this stuff didn't happen?' And I hadn't opened the letter until about three months ago."
Read the episode synopsis and listen to the podcast below.
Digging Deep with Robert Plant has returned, and the start of Season 4 reunites Robert with Matt Everitt after a long enforced break. Here they discuss what a touring musician does when he can’t go on tour, some of the musical rarities and curios that Robert uncovered at home during lockdown and the matter in hand, a very special song. The track is called 'Bluebirds Over the Mountain,' and it was written and recorded by Ersel Hickey in 1958 and made a hit by Ritchie Valens that same year. Robert recorded a version for his 2017 album Carry Fire and enlisted the vocals skills of Chrissie Hynde, as you'll hear...