“Glorious anthems”: The artist Robert Plant called a musical shapeshifter

A new era of rock and roll was dawning during the late 1960s, a darker, more abrasive style that did away with the spaced-out ‘peace and love’ style of the hippie era. Led Zeppelin were at the forefront of that rock revolution, paving the way for the emergence of hard rock and metal from their very first performances. Yet, if you scratch beneath the surface of the Robert Plant-fronted outfit, you will invariably find that, like many other rock outfits of that era, their work is indebted to the efforts of blues, R&B, and early rock and roll stars from decades prior.

Led Zeppelin’s rich sound was always awash with the influences of American blues and the early rock and roll music which had first inspired the likes of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant. The songwriters have never made much of an effort to hide their inspirations, although they have often stopped short of giving royalty cheques to the various artists that they have ‘borrowed’ from over the years. In particular, Plant has always maintained a deep-rooted appreciation for the pioneering sounds of rock and roll progenitor Bo Diddley, whose influence over the landscape of modern rock music cannot be overstated.

Diddley changed everything when he emerged from Chicago’s blossoming music scene during the mid-1950s. Inspired by the rich tapestry of blues music developing in America during that time, having witnessed the likes of John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters, Diddely began to experiment with his own sound, pushing the boundaries of what could be achieved with a guitar. He was an utterly essential figure in ushering in the first age of rock and roll, with early releases like ‘Pretty Thing’ or his self-titled track ‘Bo Diddley’, opening up an entirely new world of rock expression.

Every rock guitarist who has emerged in the past six decades owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to Diddley. He was among the first to utilise reverb within his playing style, and the inventive, otherworldly nature of his playing influenced multiple generations of guitarists and musicians in his wake, including Robert Plant and Led Zeppelin. However, it wasn’t just Diddley’s rock innovations that endeared the blues legend to Plant; it was also his endless adaptability and development.

Inevitably, Diddley’s commercial success faded away after the first age of rock and roll, as younger generations picked up the baton. However, that didn’t stop the guitarist from continuing to experiment with his own sound. During the 1970s, while Led Zeppelin were rapidly ascending to the top of the global rock scene, Diddley began to adopt influences of funk and hard rock into his blues-orenitated sound, producing some woefully overlooked and pretty bizarre records like The Black Gladiator–live performances of which saw the guitarist bedecked in a leather gimp suit.

“His voice and relentless, glorious anthems echo down through my years,” Plant once said of the groundbreaking songwriter, following Diddley’s death in 2008. “This royal shapeshifter continues to influence four generations of musicians on a daily basis.” Seemingly, Plant and his former group are included within those generations, as there likely wouldn’t have been a Led Zeppelin were it not for the vital innovations of Diddley back in the 1950s.

The hard rock progenitors certainly aren’t alone in that fact, either. Over the decades, Diddley’s work has provided major influences to everybody from The Rolling Stones to punk rock poster boys The Clash. In fact, Diddley even opened for The Clash during their first tour of the United States during the late 1970s, though he didn’t seem particularly impressed with the abrasive sounds of the punk revolution.

“If you can play, you don’t need 12 amplifiers stacked upside the wall,” he later declared. I wonder what he would have made of Led Zeppelin.