Robert Plant has no plans to retire from making music.
The Led Zeppelin frontman has released his second duets album, ‘Raise The Roof’, with Alison Krauss today (19.11.21), and the 73-year-old musician has insisted he still very much enjoys what he does and isn’t ready to call it quits anytime soon.
In an interview with Britain’s The Daily Telegraph newspaper, Robert said: “I was 19 on the first Led Zeppelin rehearsals, and I was 32 when [drummer] John [Bonham] passed away, that awful time.
“People used to say to me, ‘Well, you must have done enough now?’ Enough of f****** what? ‘Enough to retire!’
“So imagine the blessing to be 40 years further down the road, and I still don’t know enough to stop in any respect.
“There’s always something new to learn, somewhere new to take it. I love it.”
As someone who loves to learn something new, the ‘Stairway to Heaven’ hitmaker was more than happy to become Alison’s harmonies student.
The rocker quipped that he was too busy being a “rock ‘n’ roll cliche” to know about “strict melodies” and proper harmonising when he was in Zeppelin, and so he jumped at the chance to be coached by fiddle and harmony expert, Alison, on how best to compliment her vocal.
He said recently: “As an English singer, I usually reach for the normal pop/rock stuff that I might have done with Zep on ‘Thank You’ or ‘Little Drops Of Rain’.
“But Alison comes from a different world.
“She is always at pains to tell me that while was flying my kite in the back of a van she was seven years into fiddle competitions.
“She never went to prom because she was in the corner harmonising when I was already becoming a rock ‘n’ roll cliche at a very early age.
“She coaches me and gives me alternatives to bolster her vocal.
“She hears the way you can embellish a melody.
“I was learning all that Chitlin’ Circuit phrasing in the mid-60s, so I never knew about strict melodies.
“I was very happy to put myself into the position of being a student to see if I could do it.”
‘Raise The Roof’ comes 14 years after the pair’s Grammy-winning ‘Raising Sand’ LP.