The Roy Harper Article with Zep Content

[Ana Madani <madania@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>From Melody Maker, March 1977:

Finger On The Pulse
by Roy Harper

Robert Plant is one of the great 'mediatricians' of the Sixties and is
likely to remain so into the Eighties and Nineties and beyond the year
2000.  I can once remember another great bard, George Bernard Shaw,
speaking full-bloodedly into a camera telling us that the age of mass media
had arrived and beware all you politicians and others who would use it,
because the people could tell straight away fia this new medium who was an
honest man and who wasn't.

My reference to this little story has a particular purpose.  It is no
longer possible, in this day and age, to be just a poet, or just a man, or
just a good musician, or just a good anything in order to achieve the
consistency needed to maintain longevity of public acclaim cush as Robert
has been afforded.

One has to be brilliant at one or two things, excellent at several others
and good at most of the rest.  To come off the winner after ten years of
exposure on today's media,  one is either a god or exceptionally
well-advised and totally obedient.

The people make their heroes and like to see them fly but seldom have the
heroes of the common man been made of sterner stuff than in this age, when
one false move is seen by the vast majority as a false move, and the mover,
himself becomes the object of an ostracism so fierce as to yield a former
hermit saint into the jaws of twitching suicide at full speed.

In my estimation, Robert's forte is twofold:  one, I think, is his ability
to understand the forces at work in what we loosely call the youth culture,
and two, not only to understand them but to continue to assimilate them
into the nucleus of his art, so that at no time in the last few years has
his finger been anywhere other than on the pulse, the pulse of human youth
on this planet.

To be that vital is no mean feat.  My own finger, for instance, is on
several weird pulses at once!

In one sense, it is hard to talk about Robert's contribution to British art
without a reference to Jimmy Page, his great co-pilot because the vast
majority of musical forms and structures in which their work is contained
can be traced in my view to solidly British foundations.

Although a great many of us are blues-influenced in this generation, our
own original work manifests many of the great traditions of our own
indigeneous art.  This is especially true of Robert, whose fantasies of the
British past and future lend themselves admirably to Jimmy's flowing
intricacy of design.

If you hold the plate from Lindisfarne or Iona or the Book of Kells in your
hand and you listen to "Battle of Evermore," "Four Sticks" or even the
global village influenced "Kashmir" the family resemblance is striking.

Robert's ability as a rock lyricist is second to none because of his
awareness of the medium/people/world.  In my view, he is at his best when
he is not being portentous.  "Stairway to Heaven" suffers in thsi way,
perhaps, although it has brought many a tear to my eye, whereas lyrics like
on "The Song Remains the Same," "The Rain Song" and "In The Light" are pure
joy.

If Robert has a failing, it is his almost deification of all things Celtic,
to the detriment of all things English, where, at one time, there was much
Celtic basking to be had in much-reflected English glory; a sickening
aspect of modern British life, especially to one, as myself, who is aware
of the great contribution of Anglo-Saxon art to the greater good of British
art in general.

To this end I thought that Robert's contribution to the Zeppelin film was
untimely.  But then again, I've been guilty of much rasher acts than that
myself.  I know he's not that serious anyway, because he has deified the
Wolves, a purely English institution.

In a land where towers of strength are not a common phenomenon and great
all-rounders are sadly a dying breed, if only temporaneously, I am proud to
be contemporary with Robert, whose light and inspiration will shine, I am
sure, for many long years.  He will continue to produce, meanwhile, and I
only hope that I'm around in another ten years because I've got a feeling
that he's just coming into his own.  The song, although remaining the same,
is once-upon-an-age improved upon, and those of us around to see it do so
are illuminated beyond time, by it.

[end]



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