2009 Q Awards - Grosvenor House Hotel, London.
Robert Plant wins: Outstanding Contribution to Music Award
RP’s Acceptance Speech:
In 1963 most bands passing through my town worked off the same sheet – Chicago R&B and early Motown identikit – packed with mail order arrogance and a taste for our local girls –
No social commentary just cash and penicillin…
One day the singer in a school Beat Group got sick – I stepped in –
Singing the songs was OK – what do you do with yourself in the guitar solos?
Stare at your shoes, think of Elvis – or preen??
What a blast – I was in heaven and ignored with a vengeance –
Well – time passes, creating shapes whilst styles and fashions come and go – nothing too self conscious - blissfully slogging on through the blacked out worlds of Mods, Rockers, Beatniks, the ludicrous elite and the hazardously psychedelic..
Then one day all the walls, the doors and the floor dissolved..
The Pan Am airliner taxied to a halt. The door flew back to reveal a subculture of wild, vulnerable, joyous, pained messengers , Shamen, Antichrists and hustlers…genius and trash…
All ministered by a support system of bogus medics, seers, cheap perfume and sweat.
Vivid, glorious and now all but gone…
The world is smaller now and a new world of music continues to confirm its beauty. Africa, for example, now telegraphs its distress, its anger and its corruption to a universal audience as did the far off prophets, Lenny Bruce, Dylan, JB Lenoir and Billy Bragg…
Down the years as much or as little of this whirlwind has been mine to connect with…
I have drawn a beautiful wild card that enriches my days and allows access to all the worlds of music and people and energy
A card for naivety
A card for learning
And a card for saying thank you
So thank you for the ride…
Jimmy, Jonesy and Bonzo, Terry Reid, Charlie Patton, Ali Farka Toure, Najat Atabou, Justin Adams, Elvis Presley, Roscoe Holcombe, The sons and daughters of Clarksdale, Mississippi, Owain Glyndwr, The Howling Wolf, Arthur Lee, Greil Marcus, Damon Albarn, Bob Harris, Charlie Gillett, Fluff Freeman, Johnnie Walker, Mike Raven, Tommy Vance, John Peel, Alan Freed, Wolfman Jack, Steve Bull, Andy Kershaw, Tinariwen, The Buckleys (father and son), Brother Ray, The GTO’s, Chicago Plastercasters, Alison Krauss, Soweto Gospel Choir, Willie Dixon, Billy Fury, Stourbridge Town Hall, Dock Boggs, Leadbelly, Joe Meek, Jack Goode, Bukka White, Blind Willie Johnson, Sir Richard Burton (19th Century), Sandy Denny, Memphis Minnie, Transglobal Underground, Julian Cope, Peter Gabriel, Paul Bowles, Bill Curbishley, Peter Grant, Richard Cole, Phil Carson, Ahmet Ertegun, Nicola Powell and the Dansette Conquest Auto – Major.
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