Robert Plant Born: Led Zeppelin's Golden-Voiced Frontman

Robert Plant fused blues wailing, Celtic mysticism, and primal energy into a vocal style that defined Led Zeppelin and the entire hard rock genre. Born in West Bromwich, England, in 1948, he spent his teenage years singing in blues bands around Birmingham, absorbing the music of Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, and Bukka White. Jimmy Page recruited him for the New Yardbirds, which became Led Zeppelin, in 1968. Plant was nineteen. His vocal performance on Led Zeppelin's debut album established him as the most powerful singer in rock, and his range expanded across subsequent albums as the band moved from blues covers to original compositions that drew on folk, Eastern music, and mythology. "Stairway to Heaven," released in 1971, became the most requested song in American radio history, though Led Zeppelin never released it as a single. Plant wrote the lyrics in a single sitting at Headley Grange, and the song's progression from acoustic folk to electric climax became the template for every rock ballad that followed. A personal tragedy in 1977, the death of his five-year-old son Karac from a stomach infection while the band was on tour in America, devastated Plant and contributed to the band's eventual dissolution. John Bonham's death in 1980 ended Led Zeppelin permanently. Plant's post-Zeppelin career has been remarkably adventurous, spanning Moroccan-influenced rock, Celtic folk, and the Grammy-winning Raising Sand collaboration with bluegrass singer Alison Krauss. He has consistently refused to treat Led Zeppelin as a nostalgia act, declining lucrative reunion tour offers in favor of new music that challenges his own legacy.