Under the Hood: Robert Plant on the Blues of Led Zeppelin

During its later years, Led Zeppelin got called out a lot for – let us say—borrowing other people’s blues without their knowledge.  Eventually, the band got it all straightened out, and gave credit where credit was due.  But they weren’t THAT apologetic about it.  From the band’s point of view, they made that music their own.  Robert Plant.

I think what we did was that we brought it back in another form rather like Cream did Skip James stuff “I’m So Glad,” all that sort of thing “Crossroads.”  Nobody can complain because by doing that we got a lot of kids like Aerosmith who used to hang around sort of adoring us and into the blues and they already got a finger on the Yardbirds who were playing this kind of anemic blues, you know.  But we had Bonham and Jones behind us who had really given it something else.  Anybody who complains, let them complain. – Robert Plant