Read Stairway To Heaven for Free Online Page A

more “respectable” life and career. All the while, the younger Plant was making his own homemade instruments (harmonicas and kazoos) and treating each as if it were a Stradivarius. While his dad was dejected over Robert’s disinterest in making the most of his education, the teenager was poising himself in front of a mirror, teaching himself to sing by imitating Elvis records.
    Most of the rock musicians—from the Beatles to the Stones to Led Zeppelin—who emerged in the sixties came from a working-class background. Their parents had survived the terrors and the heartaches of World War II—including Germany’s savage bombing of London that ignited the city in flames and left much of it in ruins. The British economy had been devastated as well by years of war, and it struggled to recover. For many young musiciansin Britain—who had grown up in households listening to Frank Sinatra and the Stan Kenton Orchestra—rock music became not only a way they might escape poverty, but it was their form of rebellion, too, a means of lashing out at the middle-and upper-class traditions that, to them, represented the oppression and the pain they and their families had endured. As the years progressed, rock music increasingly became one of their most potent weapons in the rebellion.
    But while rock music may have primarily been the domain of the underclass, the Plants were purely middle class. Born in 1948 in West Bromwich, Staffordshire, and growing up in the west Midlands in the small rural town of Kidderminster, Robert had a background that was so highbrow that in the earliest days of Led Zeppelin, he used to look a bit disdainfully at the rest of us “commoners.” He never said much that was condescending, but he sometimes seemed to breathe arrogance, as though he were a cut above us.
    Robert attended King Edward VI grammar school in Stourbridge, where schoolboy pranks were part of his way of life. One afternoon, he concealed a pair of tennis shoes inside a piano, making it impossible for the teacher to play—a caper that got him expelled from the music program, which was the class he most loved.
    Beginning at age fourteen, Robert let his hair grow (ostensibly to attract girls) and started playing with rock bands. He began spending less time on his schoolwork, although he did show some interest in subjects like archeology. More than anything, he felt driven to pursue his musical interests, even if his family reacted skeptically to them.
    At one point, Robert Sr. hoped that his son would eventually get his musical passions out of his system. He used to drop his boy off at gigs at the Seven Stars Blues Club, where the teenager sang with the Delta Blues Band, accompanied by Chris Wood’s flute and Terry Foster’s eight-string guitar. When the songs were familiar, the crowd cheered and the young singer became ecstatic. But Robert was also inclined to introduce blues songs by unknowns like Blind Boy Fuller, hushing the audience and leaving them as bewildered as if he were performing Carmen or Madama Butterfly .
    Robert was bright enough to realize that his odds of achieving success were slim. “Even the most talented singers usually don’t make it,” he said. “I’ll give myself till the age of twenty; if I’m still struggling by then, I’ll move on to something else.”
    Robert bounded from one band to another: The Crawling King Snakes (named after a John Lee Hooker song)…Black Snake Moan (named after a tune by Blind Lemon Jefferson)…the New Memphis Bluesbreakers. As he played this version of musical hopscotch, his voice began to get more attention. It literally brought people through the doors to hear that soulful, sensitive, powerful voice.
    â€œMaybe something’s starting to happen,” Robert told his friends, jacking up his hopes as he sang before full houses. But despite the increasing recognition, he still had to deal with more