Watch Robert Plant Joke About Brian Johnson Joining Led Zeppelin
Robert Plant joked about Brian Johnson replacing him in Led Zeppelin as he discussed the band’s history with the AC/DC singer in a new TV clip.
The video is taken from a new episode of Johnson’s show A Life on the Road, which airs on AXS on Sunday, and finds him and Plant wandering the hills of Wales where Led Zeppelin III began.
You can watch the clip below.
“Cream, the Grateful Dead, the white blues thing was kicking in," Plant said. "And you had that great West Coast thing going on with Jefferson Airplane and stuff. You had a subculture develop, and we kind of attached ourselves to that. We didn’t have any social statements to make. We weren’t visionaries, in that sense. But we were, still by our age, at the time, still part of that huge movement of energy.”
Reflecting on the “serendipity” of how he, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham found themselves in the same band, Plant noted that he and Bonham "had played a lot together. Jimmy and John had been in various bands, but they were session guys, and they were pretty well-heeled, pretty hot on the scene. But it didn’t matter to me and Bonzo – all we wanted to do was get a square meal.”
Johnson agreed that “that’s how it was” at the time and went on to say he felt bad going over Led Zeppelin history that had been covered so many times before. Plant told him to feel free, joking: “I can’t hardly remember any of it at all!” As they discussed the “high-octane singing” of moments like the “call to arms” cry in Zeppelin classic “Immigrant Song,” Plant told Johnson: “If you want a job now I can put a good word in for ya!”
In another clip, the pair can be seen wandering a forest path near the ancient Bron-Yr-Aur cottage, where Page and Plant wrote a number of classics. “We rented the cottage I used to go to when I was a kid, which is not far from here,” Plant said. “And we began the writing of Led Zeppelin III up there. And it was great, because it was so far away from the chaos of touring. You know what it’s like … you kept going, we had to stop.”
You can watch that clip below.