ROBERT PLANT Was Eyeing World Music Career During LED ZEPPELIN

Robert Plant revealed that several years before LED ZEPPELIN's split, he was already eying a career making music away from the rock field. According to The Pulse Of Radio, Plant spoke candidly on the inaugural episode of his new podcast "Digging Deep" about where he found himself heading musically around the time of the writing and recording of ZEPPELIN's 1976 "Presence" album.

Although Plant was still enthralled with the power and the promise of LED ZEPPELIN as a creative force, he admitted that his muse was feeling the consistent tug from world music: "I think the glorious confines of being in a four-piece band for a long time — it was magnificent at times — but also, the very idea of actually working with anybody else and finding what... another angle musically could be, was not on the cards. Y'know, we wanted to present ourselves as a combined unit, and as time went on from about 1975, or 6 onward, I started feeling... Y'know, there was a lot of North African music that was intriguing me all the time; since my first trip to Morocco in '72. And I knew that there was a possibility to work, and to work in many different areas."

Plant has spent the last two decades exploring different sounds, from the Americana-tinged "Raising Sand", a Grammy-winning collaboration with Alison Krauss in 2007, to 2017's world music-influenced "Carry Fire".

In concert, Plant and the SENSATIONAL SPACE SHIFTERS often perform a cosmic, bluesy rendition of LED ZEPPELIN's "Black Dog", and also run through ZEPPELIN's "The Lemon Song", "Babe I'm Gonna Leave You" and a rendition of "Whole Lotta Love" that integrates the Willie Dixon-penned blues classic "I Just Want To Make Love To You".