When you have been such a huge success in your career and able to say "enough is enough" I suppose more any more monetary offers don't mean anything anymore. But it must be quite something to walk away from an offer of close to a billion bucks. Some people really have got it made! I wonder if any of the big earners in Sg can turn down such an offer?
Cheers!
http://www.salon.com/2014/12/13/rob...m_medium=referral&utm_campaign=zergnet_344939
SATURDAY, DEC 13, 2014 08:01 AM MPST
Robert Plant exclusive: “I don’t want to be stuck in the ’70s or the ’80s”
Iconic rocker keeps turning down millions to reunite Led Zeppelin. He tells us why the future's more fun than past
STEPHEN DEUSNER
Last month a rumor hit the Internet that Robert Plant had turned down $800 million from Virgin Group founder Richard Branson to reunite Led Zeppelin for a proposed 35-date tour. It would have been an easy near-billion — who doesn’t know the words to “Stairway to Heaven”? It may have been eventually shot down as merely an invention of social media, but that astronomical figure doesn’t seem too far out of line for the best band to ever rock a stadium, especially one in the midst of an ambitious campaign to remaster and reissue its formidable back catalog.
Nor does it seem out of character for Plant to reject that offer. Aside from a one-show showing in 2010, which produced the excellent live album “Celebration Day,” the singer has shown no interest whatsoever in revisiting those old songs or reliving previous glories. A solo artist for three decades now—that’s three times the tenure of his former band—he has produced a large and multifaceted catalog that ranges from the pop-oriented sounds of his early albums to the retro-crooner stylings of his sole Honeydrippers release to the American roots rock of 2002’s “Dreamland” and 2007’s “Raising Sand.” The latter, a collaboration with bluegrass artist Alison Krauss, went multiplatinum and won approximately all the Grammys.
Plant could easily have settled into a career as a roots musician, but he has changed course dramatically. His latest release, the oddly titled “lullaby and … The Ceaseless Roar,” sounds like all of his previous records played at once. Musically omnivorous and beautifully sung by a man who at 66 still has one of rock’s most expressive voices, these songs move from the foothills of Appalachia to the dancefloors of Bristol, from the avenues of New York City to the plains of Africa. It might have been a mere exercise in musical cross-pollination if the songs themselves weren’t so sturdy and mysterious, full of graceful melodies and spiritually generous sentiments. As such, it’s one of the most adventurous albums of 2014.
Plant has always been a man on a journey, even as far back as his days with Led Zeppelin, who in the 1960s and 1970s proved themselves imaginative synthesists of transatlantic genres. Many of that band’s songs recount dangerous treks across forbidding landscapes, whether away from some great battle or toward some unknown destination. “They choose the path where no one goes,” Plant sang on “No Quarter,” which anchored the band’s recently reissued 1973 album “Houses of the Holy.” “They carry news that must get through.” Plant has been living up to those lyrics ever since, restlessly moving from one sound to the next, navigating by instinct and with no set destination in sight.
Cheers!
http://www.salon.com/2014/12/13/rob...m_medium=referral&utm_campaign=zergnet_344939
SATURDAY, DEC 13, 2014 08:01 AM MPST
Robert Plant exclusive: “I don’t want to be stuck in the ’70s or the ’80s”
Iconic rocker keeps turning down millions to reunite Led Zeppelin. He tells us why the future's more fun than past
STEPHEN DEUSNER
Last month a rumor hit the Internet that Robert Plant had turned down $800 million from Virgin Group founder Richard Branson to reunite Led Zeppelin for a proposed 35-date tour. It would have been an easy near-billion — who doesn’t know the words to “Stairway to Heaven”? It may have been eventually shot down as merely an invention of social media, but that astronomical figure doesn’t seem too far out of line for the best band to ever rock a stadium, especially one in the midst of an ambitious campaign to remaster and reissue its formidable back catalog.
Nor does it seem out of character for Plant to reject that offer. Aside from a one-show showing in 2010, which produced the excellent live album “Celebration Day,” the singer has shown no interest whatsoever in revisiting those old songs or reliving previous glories. A solo artist for three decades now—that’s three times the tenure of his former band—he has produced a large and multifaceted catalog that ranges from the pop-oriented sounds of his early albums to the retro-crooner stylings of his sole Honeydrippers release to the American roots rock of 2002’s “Dreamland” and 2007’s “Raising Sand.” The latter, a collaboration with bluegrass artist Alison Krauss, went multiplatinum and won approximately all the Grammys.
Plant could easily have settled into a career as a roots musician, but he has changed course dramatically. His latest release, the oddly titled “lullaby and … The Ceaseless Roar,” sounds like all of his previous records played at once. Musically omnivorous and beautifully sung by a man who at 66 still has one of rock’s most expressive voices, these songs move from the foothills of Appalachia to the dancefloors of Bristol, from the avenues of New York City to the plains of Africa. It might have been a mere exercise in musical cross-pollination if the songs themselves weren’t so sturdy and mysterious, full of graceful melodies and spiritually generous sentiments. As such, it’s one of the most adventurous albums of 2014.
Plant has always been a man on a journey, even as far back as his days with Led Zeppelin, who in the 1960s and 1970s proved themselves imaginative synthesists of transatlantic genres. Many of that band’s songs recount dangerous treks across forbidding landscapes, whether away from some great battle or toward some unknown destination. “They choose the path where no one goes,” Plant sang on “No Quarter,” which anchored the band’s recently reissued 1973 album “Houses of the Holy.” “They carry news that must get through.” Plant has been living up to those lyrics ever since, restlessly moving from one sound to the next, navigating by instinct and with no set destination in sight.
