Brian Johnson travels to Wales to meet Robert Plant in the place he moved to after recording Led Zeppelin II in a clip from the AC/DC frontman’s TV show A Life on the Road.
“We rented the cottage I used to go to when I was a kid, which is not far from here,” Plant remembered in an interview with Johnson, as they walked through the woodsin a clip from the show. “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.” The episode airs Sunday on AXS.
In another clip, Plant reflects on Led Zeppelin’s foundations. “I suppose Cream, the Grateful Dead, the white blues thing was kicking in, and you had that great West Coast thing going on with Jefferson Airplane,” he says. “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, part of that huge movement of energy.”
Later in the clip, as they sit among the rocks, Johnson reflected on how singing a Led Zeppelin song was a feat for him when he was coming up. “That’s where I was lucky,” he tells Plant. “I could [sing] … high-octave singing. The start of the ‘Immigrant Song,’ when I hear that call, it’s a ritualistic call to arms.”
“If you want a job now, I could put a word in for you,” rejoins the famously obstinate Plant, who opted not to do further reunion concerts with Led Zeppelin in 2007.
Earlier this year, Plant sang Led Zeppelin III’s “Immigrant Song” live for the first time in decades at Iceland’s Summer Solstice Festival. The tune had a new, more hypnotic arrangement with lighter drums and violin.