Led Zeppelin legend Robert Plant has revealed how the history and mystique of Wales has helped to influence his songwriting over the years - channelled via the writings of The Lord Of The Rings author J R. R. Tolkien
Plant 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').
Appearing on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Plant explains that his parents were partly responsible for his love of Tolkien's books.
"I blame my mum and dad," the frontman explains. "There's some sort of melding there."
Plant goes on to joke that he was a member of the 'inklings', the famed group of renown British writers including Tolkien and C.S. Lewis that used to frequent pubs in Oxford together in the 1930s and 40s, before nerding out with Stephen Colbert about Tolkien's writing and acknowledging that his Led Zep bandmates had no idea he was making references to The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit in his lyrics.
"Tolkien was a master," Plant says. "He opened the door to all that, sort of 'dark age' meander of history."
Plant then adds that Tolkien's upbringing in the West Midlands, alongside the author's love of Welsh culture, struck a chord with Plant growing up. Plant also 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.
Tolkien, meanwhile, moulded some of the fictional Elvish language that coloured his Middle Earth books on Welsh language structures, while the inspirational, rolling Welsh landscapes and mythological side of its history also had a big influence.
"It spoke to me because his points of reference were very close to where I live," says 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 England 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."
Watch the interview below.
Robert Plant's new album, Saving Grace, was released in September to positive reviews. Reviewing for Classic Rock, Philip Wilding wrote of the record: "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."
