Meeting Robert Plant for the interview is a real state act. There are strict conditions regarding certain topics of conversation in which the artist is extremely sensitive (this of course includes everything around Led Zeppelin), the timeslots become shorter and shorter (from forty-five minutes in the early nineties to twenty minutes in 2017) and since recently there is even a plan (due to the copyright process of 2016) for an assessor from management or record company. Which provides for an unrestrained discussion situation and above all one clarifies: The man has not only one problem, but equal several. And all have to do with the past, with his twelve years as frontman of Led Zeppelin, as rock star and sex god. "Sometimes it really seems like a curse," he confessed at the last eclipsed interview. "Like a thing that's been following me my whole life and that I just can't get rid of. Which is bad. I mean, Led Zep have been history for thirty-eight years, I've recorded eleven solo albums and tried many other things, but still I'm always and everywhere only approached by the band. That sucks. Especially since the questions are always the same: When are you getting back together? What's your problem? Why do you let the fans down like that? I find that presumptuous. It's like I'm not allowed to grow and do something else. I get put in a drawer and I have to acidify in it."
That's why Plant - with the exception of Live Aid, Atlantic Records' 40th anniversary performance and the benefit show in honour of Ahmet Ertegün in the O2 Arena - never got involved in an official Led Zep reunion. Despite astronomical offers of money: "We were offered so much that it was downright ridiculous, sums in the hundreds of millions. But I don't need money, and neither do the others. We have earned more during our active phase than we could ever spend, and Led Zep still provides us with unbelievable income through the back catalogue. So I don't want to be accused of selling myself, of just doing it to make more money. That's not gonna happen. If we compete again together, it'll be for a benefit, but nothing else. And if we write new songs together again, then under a different name. We tried that at the end of the 2000s, but back then it failed because of Jimmy."
