Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant Makes Surprise Appearance At Australian Bushfire Relief Benefit
Words by Riley Fitzgerald
Graphic by Press
While fronting Led Zeppelin and later as a solo artist, Robert Plant has toured Australia several times since first visiting in the 1970s.
Yet for all the time he has spent Down Under, Plant still finds the whole place a little baffling.
“What is that accent all about?” Plant joked when making a surprise appearance at a charity raffle held in Nashville February 1. “Where’d you get that from? f***’s sake!”
Plant did not perform at the event, held for the purpose of raising money to help victims of recent Australian bushfires which have left 27 dead and thousands homeless.
Led Zeppelin first toured the country in 1972, with portions of the band’s Syndey performance on February 27 being memorably filmed and collected on 2004’s Led Zeppelin DVD.
(Several bootleg recordings exist of Zeppelin’s other Australian shows.)
“Imagery and talent permit Robert Plant to become whatever the music makes him,” Australian Magazine Go-Set wrote of Zep’s Sydney performance. “He didn’t perform his songs at Sydney showground – he lived them… [Led Zeppelin was] genuinely worth the four bucks admission.”
The performance was attended by a record crowd of 26,000, much to the dismay of local authorities.
“Zeppelin are real live rock stars,” Go-Set‘s writer noted. ” They kept bobbing up all over Sydney during their stay, leaving a trail of excitement and show-biz type gossip in their path.”
Despite their popularity, Zeppelin may not have left the country with the most favorable of views.
Around the time of the band’s first performance on the tour, they were subjected to an unsuccessful drug bust.
Perhaps as a result. Led Zeppelin would not return to the country again, though have remained wildly popular amongst Australian music fans ever since.
Plant was most recently in the country to perform at one of Australia’s largest music festivals Bluesfest in 2018.
His new box set Digging Deep will be released on February 28.
