Behind the Writing Partnership of Robert Plant and Jimmy Page

Recreating a Led Zeppelin song with as much individuality and tact as the band themselves is not an easy task. Their songs are so chock full of flowery language and hippie mysticism that if anyone else tried them on for size, they’d run the risk of sounding over-baked. Not to mention the dichotomy between their heaviest offerings and their acoustically driven tunes—not just anyone can pull off that balancing act.

Though every member of Led Zeppelin helped formulate that unique sound, most of the songwriting within the group was left up to Robert Plant and Jimmy Page. The frontman and the guitarist wrote some of the outfit’s biggest songs—separately and as a duo.

How did their songwriting partnership come to be? Find out, below.

Plant/Page

Plant and Page met in the late ’60s when Plant was performing at a teacher’s college in Birmingham. Page was in search of a new lead singer for the Yardbirds at the time and, as soon as he heard Plant’s distinctive voice, he knew the search was over.

“I was appearing at this college when Jimmy turned up and asked me if I’d like to join the Yardbirds,” Plant once recalled. “I knew the Yardbirds had done a lot of work in America —which to me meant audiences who would want to know what I might have to offer—so naturally I was very interested.”

Page added of their first meeting, “When I auditioned him and heard him sing, I immediately thought there must be something wrong with him personality-wise or that he had to be impossible to work with, because I just could not understand why, after he told me he’d been singing for a few years already, he hadn’t become a big name yet.”

Soon after that meeting, Plant and Page began their songwriting partnership by reworking blues standards for the New Yardbirds—an outfit that would eventually become Led Zeppelin.

On the group’s debut album, Page and Plant have writing credits on almost all the tracks. From the get-go, Plant and Page’s individual strengths came together to form an even greater whole. Plant’s wail and singular songwriting voice paired perfectly with Page’s instantly recognizable guitar lines. Their songs were just classic enough to work in the rock scene but experimental enough to set them apart.

The Plant/Page writing credit pops up more often than not across the group’s discography. Of course, there are a number of John Bonham and John Paul Jones credits scattered throughout, but many of the group’s biggest hits were the product of the Plant/Page partnership.

Led Zeppelin’s biggest song is arguably “Stairway to Heaven,” which is also a Plant/Page write. Their other efforts as a duo include “Black Country Woman,” “Immigrant Song,” “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You,” “Going to California,” and more.

“I’d already played with people who’d got the same amount of adrenaline and drive as I’d got and it just so happened that Jimmy had got more than I’d got,” Plant explained of his partnership with Page in 1997. “He could channel it. He knew which way to let it go. And that was the best thing that ever happened to me, musically.”

“I’d found someone whose tastes were basically along the same lines,” he continued. “Who’d got the patience to allow me to—it’s like dangling your foot in a swimming pool to see how deep it is or how cold—accustom myself to everything that would come along that he was already aware of from the Yardbirds. Perfect relationship.”

Their partnership remained an integral part of the Led Zeppelin formula until their breakup in 1980. They later joined forces as a stand-alone duo—Page and Plant—from 1994 to 1998.

“By that time I didn’t feel like I was even a rock singer anymore,” Plant once shared. “Then I was approached by MTV to do an Unplugged session. But I knew that I couldn’t be seen to be holding the flag for the Zeppelin legacy on TV.

“Then mysteriously Jimmy turned up at a gig I was playing in Boston and it was like those difficult last days of Led Zep had vanished,” he continued. “We had this understanding again without doing or saying anything. We talked about the MTV thing and decided to see where we could take it.”

Though Plant and Page are largely focused on their own careers today, their collaborative contributions will forever link them as an inimitable duo.

Photo by Jorgen Angel / Redferns