Robert Plant - Week In Rock 1990 (MTV UK) Manic Nirvana Release
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00:00We flip to Robert Plant and we won't mention Led Zeppelin, well, maybe once.
00:05Robert Plant has a new album released this week titled Manic Nirvana.
00:09The LP has the same line-up that toured with him on the non-stop Go Tour
00:12and some have suggested his latest music is the best he's ever committed to tape.
00:16Meet the man who invented the rock and roll scream.
00:19This was how Robert Plant burst onto the scene in 1967, fronting the legendary Led Zeppelin.
00:25Since I was 19 and I met Jimmy and Led Zeppelin came out of the yard birds,
00:31the last thing that we relied on was formula and knowing that we were doing fine.
00:37When Led Zeppelin 3 followed the album with a whole lot of love and heartbreaker and stuff on it,
00:42everybody went, well, why kill a perfectly good career?
00:46And you make moves, you have musical turns and twists to satisfy yourself.
00:52That's what has to come first.
01:01His roots have always been wild rock and roll and the blues.
01:04A great Elvis fan, Robert's strength has always been his ability to combine various styles.
01:09The input from the other musicians has been very strong.
01:13I think the influences musically that they lean towards are varied
01:21and not particularly the ones that I would immediately go to.
01:24Despite references to Led Zeppelin on Men at Nirvana and the previous LP,
01:28a reunion is not something that appeals to Plant.
01:31The point is that only Led Zeppelin can fill that hole,
01:35as far as the pretenders and the people who make a living
01:39out of being copyists to a degree.
01:43And so I can't fill it because my aura or personality or career intent is not going that way.
01:52So even if I, whatever I do is not going to help or not going to re-institute the old godheads.
01:59It would only mean, you know, it's like that cart in Monty Python, you know,
02:05the Holy Grail, and the blokes go, bring it, you're dead, I'm not dead yet.
02:09But that does not mean he's left the hippie in him behind.
02:13The adventure really is that the Woodstock period was stunning.
02:17It was a remarkable time to be there.
02:21I think a lot of the cynicism that's directed towards the ageing hippie
02:25would be retracted and immediately put back in the inquisitor's pocket
02:31if they'd have been there at the time. You have to be there, you know.
02:36The new single, Hurting Kind, is the sort of record that hits you between the eyes.
02:42The album as a whole has as much to do with Gene Vincent and Muddy Waters
02:46as it does with any previous Plant record.
02:48Hendrix also gets a look in.
02:50The band plan to include one of his songs on the forthcoming tour.
02:53Being around him in New York in those loony days in the late 60s,
02:59such an incredible being, such a mild, meek guy,
03:05but just stepped onto a stage, even if it was as high as this,
03:09with the kind of incredibly expensive production that we've got here around us.
03:14He would just kill. You just lie there going, this is amazing.
03:18With this LP, Plant takes now and then into the 90s.
03:22Imitators beware.
03:29Imitators beware.