Robert Plant, the legendary frontman of Led Zeppelin, recently reflected on how the mystique and history of Wales have influenced his songwriting, an inspiration he says he channeled through the works of author J.R.R. Tolkien.
Tolkien’s writing has long been linked to Led Zeppelin’s music, with clear references appearing in several of the band’s classics. In the 1969 track “Ramble On”, Plant famously sang, “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’. Two years later, in Misty Mountain Hop, he again nodded to Middle-earth with the line, ‘So I’m packing my bags for the Misty Mountains”.
During a recent appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Plant explained that his fascination with Tolkien’s work began early, thanks to his parents. “I blame my mum and dad,” he said. “There’s some sort of melding there.”
Plant went on to joke that he was practically a member of the “Inklings,” the circle of British writers that included Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, who were known to gather at pubs in Oxford during the 1930s and ’40s. He and Colbert shared a lighthearted exchange about Tolkien’s stories, with Plant admitting that his Led Zeppelin bandmates had no idea he was weaving The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit imagery into his lyrics.
“Tolkien was a master,” Plant said. “He opened the door to all that, sort of ‘dark age’ meander of history.”
The singer also reflected on the connection between Tolkien’s background and his own. Tolkien’s upbringing in England’s West Midlands and his fascination with Welsh culture deeply resonated with Plant, who grew up in Worcestershire and has spent much of his life near the Welsh border.
“It spoke to me because his points of reference were very close to where I live,” Plant explained. “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.”
He went on to describe how the Welsh countryside and its ancient mythology shaped both Tolkien’s work and his own imagination. “It’s been so remarkable that you can have a culture that’s shunted into the west side of England that has absolutely nothing to do with the English at all,” Plant continued. “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.”
Plant’s enduring creative journey continues with his new album Saving Grace, released in September to strong reviews. Writing for Classic Rock, critic Philip Wilding praised the record, noting: “It’s a given that Plant can sing anything, and his tone and timbre here are peerless. But it’s his vocal harmonies with Suzi Dian and as part of the backing vocals where he truly shines … Plant’s journey continues ever on, and it’s one worth falling in step with.”
