Robert Plant’s opinion on R.E.M

For over a decade, Robert Plant was a crucial part of Led Zeppelin, which became one of the biggest bands in the world during the 1970s. The band transformed Hard Rock and became a huge influence on countless groups that emerged afterward. Following the band’s end after John Bonham’s tragic death, Robert Plant launched his solo career, showcasing the wide variety of music he loved and drew inspiration from.

Unlike many musicians of his generation, he has remained genuinely interested in and supportive of new artists and bands. Over the decades, he has shared his opinion on many groups that became important in the following years, including R.E.M., band fronted by Michael Stipe.

What is Robert Plant’s opinion on R.E.M

Robert Plant is a big fan of R.E.M. since the band’s early albums and already in 1988, he said that if he had made a record that at least sounded like “Document” (1987) he would be really happy. “I’ve ferreted around, working incessantly, trying different things out. If I made a record tomorrow that sounded like parts of R.E.M.’s Document, I’d be really pleased,” he told Rolling Stone magazine. That same year, he said that people who listened to them were intelligent, while criticizing Atlantic Records for giving more space to bands like Ratt and “Michael Whitesnake” (David Coverdale).

“Well, despite their fixation with Ratt and Michael Whitesnake and that one level of seeing hard, powerful music, Atlantic have realized that there’s a section of the public who are intelligent, who listen to R.E.M. and Let’s Active and don’t tune in to format radio. They listen to college radio. I don’t know how they fell upon this idea, this notion that college radio exists. But now they’re telling me what I was telling them two and a half years ago on the Shaken ’n’ Stirred tour. I want to get across to college kids because I think about my music a lot. I work hard on it. (So) I don’t want it to get wishy-washed around with all the formula music,” he told Musician magazine.

Robert Plant said R.E.M. was a band with “sensitivity and concern”

Although R.E.M. became a really successful band, Plant said he felt they had “sensitivity and concern”, not becoming a traditional Pop band. “Jefferson Airplane, Buffalo Springfield, Kaleidoscope. So many bands were really telling it like it really was, rather than just talking about how much they loved their baby. How they wanted to pick her up in their pink Cadillac or whatever shit it was.”

“And I think that there’s a sensitivity and a concern around with people like U2, R.E.M., Blind Melon. You know, people singing about stuff that’s not just the usual pop stuff, and that’s the way I feel. You know, I like to sing macho songs and all sorts of songs that are dramatic. But I was inspired in those early days to write music that was more considerate. So I’m doing what we did in Zep, I guess. I’m trying to write music that inspires me and lets my own creative juices flow,” Plant told Steve Newton.

Since starting his solo career in the early 1980s, Plant has been a strong advocate of college radio. He often said they were the ones truly playing the records of interesting and promising new bands such as R.E.M. After “Document”, the American band. released some of their biggest albums. They are “Green” (1988), “Out of Time” (1991), and “Automatic for the People” (1992). Those records were crucial in making them one of the best-selling bands of all time. They have sold an estimated 90 million records worldwide.

R.E.M.’s Peter Buck was lucky enough to see Led Zeppelin live a couple of times

R.E.M.’s guitarist Peter Buck was lucky enough to have seen Led Zeppelin a couple of times when he was young. Decades later he performed alongside John Paul Jones. “I certainly don’t put us in the Led Zeppelin or whatever category. But it is nice to see things get passed along. I was really lucky I got to see some of the great originals.”

“I never saw The Beatles; they stopped touring when I was like six or eight. But I saw Paul McCartney early on and I saw Led Zeppelin a couple of times. I think of all the great artists I got to see and be influenced by. Some I’ve gotten to play with. And then I see the younger generation of bands that maybe we’ve influenced, and that’s what you want. You want the records to mean something,” Peter Buck said in an interview with Flagpole magazine in 2005.

Formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1980, the group led by Michael Stipe (vocals), Peter Buck (guitar), Mike Mills (bass), and Bill Berry (drums) released its debut album, “Murmur”, in 1983. However, it was four years later, in 1987, that their success began to reach a new level with the release of the album “Document”. It had hits “The One I Love” and “It’s the End of the World as We Know It”.