Listening to some of Plant's 90's and recent releases I noticed he NEVER uses the raspy voice that he seemed to use exclusively in LZ. Did he have some major vocal problems or what? It's a real shame cause he his singing now just lacks so much punch, I mean I hate when singers scream\rasp just for the sake of it but it can be useful that's for sure. What happened?

rainman1985 said:

Plant in Zep WAS THE GREATEST VOCALIST EVER IMHO!
I'm dissapointed the later zep releases had poor mixing and recording where you could hardly hear the vocals.

AFTER ZEP; by then after years of touring and putting his voice through alot + heavy drug use and alcohol he didn;t have the same range or clarity. He simply cannot sing like that any more. he has explained this in radio interviews.

'way down inside women.. you need looooove'; I FUCKING LOVE THAT SHIT HE USED TO DO!

rainman1985 said:

Wasn't he castrated sometime in the early 90's? I distinctly remember reading that somewhere...

Was it from the first solo release onwards that the raspiness stopped?

While I know his voice didn't sound so great during the 90's, I've seen footage of him from just this past june on youtube (sorry don't have a link), and he sounded amazing. I think he was singing Whole Lotta Love. But he sounded just like he did in the Zeppelin days.

During his Zep days. Wow!! I just think he had one of the best rock voices of all time.

I saw him a few years ago on Austin City Limits. His voice wasn't bad..--it was good. But during his prime.. watch-out. That guy.. Wow.

Because his voice is shot. I mean, he was REALLY singing high and loud. I happened to catch an episode of that Supergroup show, and they were rehearsing Zeppelin's "Out On The Tiles" to play, and Sebastian Bach could NOT do it. It's just really high.

He actually had throat surgery back in the early 70s, midway through Zep's glory days.

He has said recently that he hates listening to the first couple of Zeppelin albums (which IMO are essential) because he was so young and he thought he should have "held back" his voice a lot more. The whole "less is more" approach.

But then if he did that, it just wouldn't be the Zeppelin/Plant that we all know.

I saw him about a year and a half ago, and he sounded AMAZING though. Better than he did during Zep's latter days in fact. He even belted out a full-on "Whole Lotta Love" at the end complete w/ the "orgasm" section in the middle.


Just don't call him Bob though. He hates that.
[Edited 11/14/06 12:03pm]