A life in music: Robert Plant on Led Zeppelin, Alison Krauss and his endless wanderlust
Listen – You'd Better Run "I'm 17, full of myself, in a youth club with Noddy Holder …" It's a warm-boned autumn afternoon in London's Primrose Hill, and Robert Plant, 69, is luminous as a cartoon lion, a Soul Jazz records T-shirt tight over his belly, his golden mane winking in a dimly lit local French restaurant. Carry Fire, his 11th solo album (24th if you count collaborations and Led Zeppelin LPs) is just out, and with a little judicious nudging – Plant generally dislikes nostalgia – he's looking back. We are somewhere in the West Midlands in 1966. "We'd borrow Noddy's dad's window-cleaning van for our gear, buckets clanking through the Black Country streets, so to have a record that was going to be pressed, have a dust sleeve – it was showing-off time." He rears up. "'Well, we've got this deal with CBS, Noddy.' And Noddy goes: 'That's all right, we've got one with Columbia.' And then I found out...
