Recommendations of the Editorial team
An archive text from 2022.
In the latest episode of his “Digging Deep” podcast, Robert Plant spoke about his admiration for Bob Dylan. He expressed his excitement about songwriters who have the talent to express other people’s feelings in their lyrics. For him personally, this was beyond his imagination. For him, Bob Dylan in particular is a prime example of such singer-songwriters. At the same time, he praised Dylan’s current album “Rough And Rowdy Ways”, which was released last year.
Led Zeppelin singer and radio host Matt Everitt chatted about the different approaches to writing a song. Be it with words or the instrumentation. Plant raised the question about the meaning of the lyrics. “Which soul are you exposing? Your own? Do you slip into a character or do you prefer to relate to people you care about. And reflect on their problems? Then a song takes a different turn. That’s definitely an achievement.”
Dylan’s songwriting goes beyond his imagination
After Everitt expressed surprise at this statement, Plant added. “My own songwriting is pretty straightforward. The idea of dressing up in something that’s another person’s situation that you can only look at from the outside. That’s beyond my imagination. Being another person in your own song and verbalizing their situation.”
Plant described Dylan’s latest album, Rough And Rowdy Ways. It includes songs about “people who have lived a life and talk about exactly that.” According to him, Dylan is “able to tell – in an almost miraculous way – the story of what he sees himself. And how he sees other people.”
Plans on Dylan’s latest album: “It’s just the story of our lives!”
When Robert Plant heard the first song on the album, “I Contain Multitudes”, he was of the opinion: “This is simply the story of our lives!” Plant was convinced that Dylan “could probably have written for a week in these trains of thought”, which were “moving” and “very special”.
The main topic of the current podcast episode was the song “Rude World”. Plant’s collaboration with Jimmy Page from the album “Inner Flame” from 1997. “Jimmy’s guitar playing is out of this world,” Plant praised the musician. “For the song, we were able to apply effects and push the snare to the extreme and generally record things that Jimmy and I wouldn’t normally have done as musicians and songwriters.”