Robert Plant on how mystique of Wales and magic of Tolkien influenced Led Zeppelin

Led Zeppelin legend Robert Plant has long had links with Wales – from recording here and living here.

When it comes to Cymru, the rock legend most definitely wears his heart on his sleeve.

Appearing on US chat show The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the rock star revealed how the history and mystique of Wales had administered a profound effect on his songwriting over the years – via the fantastical writings of The Lord Of The Rings author J R. R. Tolkien

During his years with the all-conquering rock juggernaut Plant had referenced Tolkien’s work in a number of Zeppelin songs including 1969’s Ramble On (‘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’) and 1971’s Misty Mountain Hop (‘So I’m packing my bags for the Misty Mountains’).

It appears it was the rocker’s mum and dad who were partly responsible for his love of Tolkien’s books – and his ongoing fascination with Cymru.

“I blame my mum and dad,” he laughed. “There’s some sort of melding there.”

Plant joked with Colbert that he was a member of the ‘inklings’, the famed group of renowned British writers including Tolkien and C.S. Lewis that used to frequent pubs in Oxford together in the 1930s and 40s, before acknowledging that his Led Zeppelin bandmates were clueless to the fact he was making references to The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit via his lyrics.

“Tolkien was a master,” Plant said. “He opened the door to all that, sort of ‘dark age’ meander of history.”

The musician revealed that Tolkien’s upbringing in the West Midlands, alongside the author’s love of Welsh culture, struck a chord with the young Plant growing up. The musician spent much of his youth in the West Midlands having grown up in Worcestershire, while he has since spent time living in Wales and currently lives just a few miles from the Welsh border.

It is well known that Tolkien’s creation of fictional Elvish language that coloured his Middle Earth books were absed on Welsh language structures, while the inspirational, rolling Welsh landscapes and mythological side of its history was also had a defining influence.

“It spoke to me because his points of reference were very close to where I live,” said Plant. “Very close to where my parents, unwittingly, used to take me, through this landscape, where you began from another culture that’s still around, [to a place where] you can read what the landscape gave you from the old times, before there were highways and stuff like that. So it becomes quite evocative, and I think Tolkien had it down.

“It’s been so remarkable that you can have a culture that’s shunted into the west side of Britain that has absolutely nothing to do with the English at all,” he continues. “The Welsh are British. And so the mix of all the legend and the space-shifting and all that stuff, it’s there, it’s 15 miles from where I live. You can feel it all.”

Robert Plant has recently released his new album, Saving Grace to positive reviews.

Find out more here – https://www.robertplant.com/