Burton Cummings, the “fantastic” singer Robert Plant fundamentally disagreed with

Plant hadn’t had a great deal of success as a singer. While he had always been keen on performing since he was young, those angelic pipes that the world is now obsessed with often went unnoticed in the music scene in Birmingham. He enjoyed making music, and knew he was good at it, but with a lack of clear success, he thought that it may have been time to unplug the microphone and get a job in the real world. Then he met Jimmy Page.

Page was a session musician from London, who also had made a name for himself as the guitarist from The Yardbirds at the time, but he wasn’t yet considered in the same league as Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton. Page was yet to prove himself, and he was keen to do so with a new band, Led Zeppelin, merely a twinkle in his eye at this point but a musical endeavour that Plant would help him realise.

After speaking to singers dotted around London, everyone was either working prominently on their solo career or was already in another band. Page wasn’t sure he’d ever find a singer, until he was told to check out a vocalist from Birmingham. This led him to Plant, and the timing was perfect as Plant was on the verge of giving up chasing his dreams in a bid to become an accountant. He decided to play with Page and see where this new musical endeavour went, but he also vowed that this would be his last shot.

“I decided that if I didn’t get anywhere by the time I was twenty, I would pack it in,” said Plant, divulging the ultimatum that he gave himself before jamming with Page and co. While this statement might seem a bit dramatic, Plant’s ambition to become a singer, and the niggling voice in the back of his head that told him he might never accomplish that dream, is a good indication as to the kind of performer he would become.

Let’s take a look at his career briefly: Whether he is performing in Led Zeppelin or as a solo artist, Plant has always looked to push himself musically. That means writing elongated ballads that test his range, and branching out into various genres. While he is considered a rock singer, Led Zeppelin also served in the trenches of blues, folk and acoustic music. Equally, as a solo artist, Plant expanded into electronic music for an album and had never stopped pushing himself. He came so close to not making it that he refuses to remain stagnant in his pursuit of artistic endeavours, regardless of how successful he becomes.

“You can’t say that you want a life on the edge and you want an adventure and all that sort of thing in the land of music and in the world out there and end up playing exactly the same thing forever,” said Plant. Here, he addresses the fact that he rarely plays Led Zeppelin songs anymore, and is constantly looking to write and perform new music.

Plant was subsequently asked for his opinion on Burton Cummings, someone who likes playing the classics and feels privileged that they still resonate with people. This goes against Plant’s mindset that an artist should keep moving. Plant acknowledged the way of thinking, but admitted that he fundamentally disagrees with it.

“Fantastic singer. Great singer. ‘The Ballad of the Last Five Years’, beautiful song, I mean amazing,” said Plant, discussing Cummings before explaining why he disagrees with him. “I mean, I can get up and do, you want something by Elvis Presley or Ali Farca Ture, I can do them, I can go into character and obviously I sing my own songs too, Burton, you know, out there in your theatre, out there in wherever it is, Chilly Willy Land. But I gotta mess with them because I was training to be a chartered accountant once upon a time, so I knew what drill dreary lifeless life might have been.”