Robert Plant and Saving Grace at the Bristol Beacon, 13th March 2024

I'm trying to remember the first time I heard Led Zeppelin. I'm pretty sure it would have been at my friend Liz's house. Maybe that time she slipped into her brother Robert's room and smuggled Led Zeppelin IV from his record collection for a sneaky listen while he was out. We'd have been about eleven, I think; firm fans of David Bowie and Marc Bolan by then, but sensing this was something a bit edgier ... more dangerous, perhaps. Not long after that it was 'Houses of the Holy', singing along to 'D'yer Mak'er' in her bedroom, plus an early encounter with the thrill of metaphor in the opening line of 'The Rain Song: 'It is the springtime of my loving ... '. And a little later 'Physical Graffiti' - all Robert's and all borrowed briefly on the sly.

I was thinking about all this while listening to Robert Plant and his band 'Saving Grace' sing 'The Rain Song' at the newly refurbished Bristol Beacon. That feeling of hearing live songs you've lived with almost your whole life. There's not many other people I can still do that with ... there's no chance of seeing David, Lou or Leonard  again, Bob's apparently reluctant to play the songs people most want to hear, and David Byrne was just that bit later. What a privilege, then, to listen to the man with curly hair singing, even though our seats were right at the back of the auditorium. (I was taking a poetry group at the Bristol Folk House when they went on general sale, and had to wait an hour till the break to dash to the box office at the Beacon, by which time they'd almost all sold out. When I arrived back, red in the face and breathless and without my usual cup of tea and flapjack from the cafe, none of my charges seemed that impressed by my achievement, but that's poets for you.) 

Leonard's voice got better as he aged - he was sounding like God when I saw him in 2012 and 2013 - but as the affectionate cheering during his live performance of 'The Tower of Song' attested, it was never what you'd call golden. David's celebrated range of three and a half octaves diminished to the point where he'd struggle with that long high note in 'Life on Mars' (admittedly always hard for a mortal to sing).  Bob's voice is sandier and gluier than ever. Robert can still ooooh better than the best of them, though. 

My photos are rubbish, of course, not least on account of the distance: I reckon he was standing just about at the end of my back garden, with me at my bedroom window, whch is a bit long distance for a balcony scene, but here's a couple. I was there.