Rock legend Robert Plant appeared on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to promote his new album, Saving Grace, in a wide-ranging conversation that touched on everything from the formation of his latest band to how the works of J.R.R. Tolkien inspired Led Zeppelin.
The interview began with Colbert recalling their last encounter on The Colbert Report, noting a memorable detail his producer had reminded him of. “You came on and gave me some weed, which I did not remember possibly because I accepted it from you,” Colbert said, to which Plant simply smiled.
When asked how his latest project came together, Plant confirmed it started with a conversation at a pub near the Welsh border. “A guy came up to me and said, do you know—and he started reeling off these amazing English/British folk artists. And my heart took flight. Someone knows what I feel,” Plant recalled. “I more or less live in this dream world where it’s very difficult to find people that have the same affinity.”
He described the creative process that followed: “So I grabbed this guy and a gallon later, we started saying, well, maybe we could do something with that old incredible string band song, or whatever happened to Bert Jansch, or what if we take somebody else’s song and change the name?” When Colbert noted this approach is standard for folk songs, Plant agreed. “That’s what they are for. God knows where they came from in the beginning.”
Robert Plant – Saving Grace
The conversation then turned to J.R.R. Tolkien, a passion shared by both Plant and Colbert. “Tolkien was a master,” he said. “He opened the door to all that, sort of ‘dark age’ meander of history.”
Plant hails from the same English region that inspired Tolkien’s Middle-earth and said the imagery in works like The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings had a profound influence on his songwriting, though his Led Zeppelin bandmates had no idea. “It spoke to me because the points of reference were very close to where I live and very close to where my parents unwittingly used to take me through this landscape.” He recalled childhood trips in his parents’ old Ford car “into the Welsh hills and into the very misty mountains and then to find these castles.”
The landscape and its legends shaped both Tolkien and Plant. “You can read what the landscape gave you from the old times before there were highways and stuff like that. So it’s quite evocative and I think that J.R.R. Tolkien had it down,” Plant said, describing the Celtic culture of the Welsh borders as distinct from English traditions: “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 observed. “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 full interview below. Click here to stream Saving Grace on your preferred digital platform and to order the album on CD or vinyl.
Plant is currently on the road touring in support of the album. Find tickets to his upcoming shows here.
Robert Plant’s Dream World: From “The Vikings” To The Folk Songs Of The British Isles
Robert Plant’s Led Zeppelin Bandmates Had No Idea He Was Referencing Tolkien In The Band’s Lyrics
