Robert Plant Thinks Sheltered Rock Stars Suffer From ‘Affliction’
Living like a rock star sounds like good work if you can get it, but if there's anyone who understands the drawbacks, it's Robert Plant -- and as he pointed out in a recent interview, that world can become its own kind of creatively destructive prison if you let it.
Speaking with the Pulse of Radio (via Blabbermouth), Plant responded to an observation about stars of his stature leading "protected" lives by retorting, "Well, that's an affliction. I mean, life doesn't stop because you have a purple patch."
Calling a life of fame and fortune and "affliction" might sound ungrateful, but as Plant continued, he made it clear he was talking about trying to avoid the deadening bubble that some stars find themselves in, and are eventually unable to continue growing as artists as a result. More to the point, Plant reminded listeners that while talent certainly played a part in his early rise to stardom, so did luck.
"The only reason that anything ever happened to me in the first place was because I was in good company," he mused, referring to his bandmates in Led Zeppelin. "And then more so, or probably equally as much, we adventured. [Jimmy] Page and I, with a couple of roadies. We just kept going and looking."
Those travels, Plant argued, helped keep him honest at a time when he could have surrounded himself with fawning admirers. "In the pre-Sahara, or Aberystwyth, or Tunis, people don't care who you are. And I need to be around that feeling," he continued. "So that I can be counted for my moment in anybody's life, just like anybody else. So I don't feast with the gods."
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