Words by Riley Fitzgerald
Graphic by Press

In a new episode of Podcast Digging Deep, Robert Plant has offered a rare reflection on the making of Led Zepplin IV’s third track ‘The Battle of Evermore’.

The song is most famous amongst all Zeppelin tracks as being the only to feature a guest vocalist.

Talking to host Matt Everitt, Plant, usually reluctant to talk about the past, opened up.

“We were very fortunate in the Zeppelin camp,” he reflected, “ there was a lot of amazing variety of stylistic influence in everybody’s playing. ‘Battle of Evermore’, just as an instrumental piece, was beautiful.”

“The way it sounded it had some essence of heralding, of drawing people together, of summing a mindset if you like,” Plant then mused.

“You have two parts of the story,” he continued. “You have the impeding travesty on the one hand, and on this other hand you have this call to unity.”

“And I tried to sing them both,” he laughs. “It was [a] very, very insane idea!”

Struggling with this call and response structure, particularly in terms of the pitch a doubling of his vocals created, Plant decided to recruit Sandy Denny of Fairport Convention, whose material on Liege and Leif Plant likened to ‘The Battle of Evermore’.

“Her voice was great”, he beamed. “And I could go out with her for the night and have the wildest, most charming time together.”

Denny, who passed away aged 31 in 1978, once said that coming out of the recording sessions for the song she felt it was the only time she had been outsung.

Robert Plant will be releasing a singles collection featuring ‘The Battle of Evermore’ December 13.