Here’s what it’s like being Robert Plant’s drummer

John Blease

A former member of Robert Plant’s solo band The Sensational Space Shifters has explained in a new interview what it’s like being Plant’s drummer, detailing Plant’s love of improvisation and how he gives silent on-stage feedback to his band.

John Blease, who joined the Sensational Space Shifters in May 2018 and performed with the group until its end in 2019, spoke in an episode of The StageLeft Podcast about his time on the road with Plant.

Blease revealed that Plant rejected his first showreel tape and it was only when he provided evidence of his more experimental musical experiences that Plant invited him to join the band.

“That very initial moment was, ‘hey, can you prepare … a showreel?’ I don’t know what you want to call it, ‘a little selection of things that you’ve done so that Robert can see you play,'” Blease said on the podcast.

“And so I put together some stuff of me playing with high profile artists, because normally that’s the kind of thing that impresses a manager or something like that. In my head anyway, they want to see, oh, you’ve played with X, Y and Z. Oh, that’s great.”

“And also if you’re up for a gig like that, you do need to have had some experience of playing large rooms. I think that’s fair enough to say, because it’s just all the stuff that comes with it, you need to be able to have the ability to deal with these changes quick, like what we’re saying, and just everything else that comes along with a gig like that,” he added.

“So I put together a reel like that, and then I got the word back, ‘Yeah, Robert’s not really feeling this’, because obviously … he’s worked with everyone in the world, you know? It’s Robert Plant, he was in Led Zeppelin, you don’t need to impress him with playing with whoever. My friends in the band said put together another one of all the more obscure, improvised, niche kind of releases and things that you’ve done over the years. And so I did, and he loved it. Well, he definitely liked it,” Blease said.

Elsewhere in the podcast, Blease explained that Plant frequently encouraged his band to change songs or experiment with new ones while they were on the road.

“To soundcheck in the van on the way there, that was often discussion time about [a] new song, changing a song. And you’d be like, what, we’re going to do that now? Okay, headphones in, in the van,” Blease said.

“Then you get there, it’s like four o’clock and then you have a couple of minutes on the drums or whatever you need to do to prepare. And then he comes out and you’re doing it. And if it doesn’t sound great, it’s binned. A few things got binned, they didn’t work and that’s OK.”

While performing on stage, Plant uses his body language to give feedback on the performance, Blease explained.

“You could tell a lot from how he was on stage,” he said. “That is his happy place, if you want to call it that. He’s still travelling the world doing gigs, you know? That’s quite incredible.”

“You could tell a lot from him just turning around, looking at you and the band if he’s enjoying it. There’s a lot of direction from hands and eyes and body movements. And then afterwards, there’d always be a little discussion, maybe.”

Blease also discussed in the podcast how Plant enjoyed his improvisational drum solos.

“I always got a little drum solo, towards the end of the thing. It was just totally freeform. I could do whatever I wanted, which I found very intimidating at the time, because you’re playing to like, maybe, I don’t know, 15, 20,000 people. And John Bonham did the best drum solos ever. And Planty was a part of that, obviously. So I did find it pretty intimidating. But he was so encouraging,” Blease said.

“When that came into the set, he loved it because it’s improvised. And then anything can happen, and I pushed it. I would do things about pushing the tempo and then slowing down. And when that came out one night, that just happened. I was like, I’m going to go with it. And started doing like polyrhythms that would give the impression of speeding up, and then slowing down. He was right into that.”

“And then afterwards, he would always comment on the drum solo to me as we were walking off. He’d say, ‘Wou know that bit? You know that bit that you did? Oh, that was great.’ Or ‘Why didn’t you develop that longer?’”

“And the bits that he would always mention and say, ‘Why didn’t you … that was great, that bit. Why didn’t you stay on that for a little while?’ They were always in my head when I was playing it. The moments where I thought, ‘Oh man, I’m away doing … I should have stayed there’. And I loved that. That’s just such a good memory for me, that little moment walking off some massive gig, and him talking to me about my improvised drum solo.”

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1 Comment on "Here’s what it’s like being Robert Plant’s drummer"

  1. You are so very blessed to bestow your true talent upon me plant.what an honor!!! Don’t second guess anything honey go with what God gave you.mr plant I’m sure knows greatness when he heard it.jerpbon keeping on

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