Robert Plant, the lead vocalist of Led Zeppelin achieved everything alongside Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham. It was by playing their hard rock heavy tone music that became the face of rock in the 1980s.
Robert was influenced by different genres. The musician loved many other bands and singers from the same era too. One of them was The Rolling Stones. Over the years the band was praised by many musicians and Plant is among them. During his participation on the BBC Radio 6 show ‘6 Music’s Festive Takeover’ back in 2021, he listed his favorite songs of all time.
But the one artist that stood out was The Rolling Stones. He has been a lifetime fan of The Rolling Stones and will continue on being one. Robert also continued about Blues and said, “You probably may have realized that in my early history as a singer and a recording artist, and the adventures that I had in the music game, I was really drawn and obsessed by the music of Chicago and Mississippi and the Delta blues”.
That’s when he talked about his favorite songs. He listed ‘Street Fighting Man‘ from the album Beggars Banquet. He recalled, “There is so much to be said about this band. (Also) about the politic of the time in the late 60s, early 70s and how great that The Rolling Stones‘ Jagger and Richards were putting together songs that were really quite vital absolutely and are in many ways timeless.”
Plant continued, “This track ‘Street Fighting Man’ from ‘Beggars Banquet’ is just incredible. And of course, many stations banned the record because they said it was subversive. There is a great comment from the band that said: ‘of course it’s subversive. It’s stupid to think that you can start a revolution with a record, I wish you could'” The song was released back in 1968. Mick Jagger is in the vocals, Keith on guitar alongside Brian Jones, Bill Wyman on Bass, and Charlie Watts on the drums.
Another song Robert talked about was the Rolling Stones’ version of ‘Come On‘ which was originally Chuck Berry’s song. The song was released as a single in 1963, two years after the original release. Plant revealed that it was his favorite track of all time. Robert said,
“You probably may have realized it in my early history as a singer and recording artist, the adventures that I’ve had in the music game. I was really drawn and obsessed by the music of Chicago, Mississippi and the Delta Blues. (So) I think on the English music scene, one of the main forerunners and purveyors for bringing this music to us as early teenage kids were the Rolling Stones. I do believe this was their first single, if I remember right. I bought it on the blue Decca label. It’s a cover of Chuck Berry‘s ‘Come On’. It was the beginning of their great career, promoting or perhaps giving us inspiration for Country Blues and City Blues of North American.”
“I was obviously, always on the Black Countryside. So I didn’t really know about the London scene too much. I did actually see the Stones on a tour (when) the Everly Brothers had the record a ‘Walk Right Back’. They did a theatre tour with Bo Diddley and Little Richard. It was the Rolling Stones first ever package tour, if you like. So it was really an eye-opener. We were all leaning towards that music. But nobody really had it down. I think in those days, The Stones were bringing the stone down the mountain. So that was really special.”
