When one enters the name Robert Plant into any search engine, they’ll probably offer tens of thousands of pages worth of information about the rocker’s personal life, early days as an artist, and an exclusive insight into the details of his family. And, upon reading a few notes about the Plant family, it won’t be much later that you’ll realize he has no brothers but only a sister called Allison.
So, it won’t also take you a few seconds to see that our headline doesn’t refer to any biological brother of Plant but a fellow figure in the music business that he held very dear. To give you some spoilers very early on in the article, the ‘brother’ the singer mentioned is not Jimmy Page or any of his Led Zeppelin bandmates, but perhaps someone you won’t guess if you were to take a bet.
Well, as Led Zeppelin dissipated into thin air after jointly deciding that they didn’t wish to go on without John Bonham, it was apparent that the sense of brotherhood they carried was prominent. The band was at the height of its success, after all, when the drummer passed away, so it could’ve been profitable to carry on by replacing their late bandmate, though Plant and company decided honorably not to.
And without much to do without his Zeppelin brothers, Robert decided to go into the studio and excel at what any artist who had just departed a band would do: To start a solo path. Well, as he started doing just that and proved to be quite good at it, his tracks went on to become commercial successes and even timeless classics.
However, although he was releasing music as a ‘solo artist,’ Plant knew he couldn’t have done all of it on his own, especially when it came to touring. So, while he was discussing his solo career and performing live in 1985, he had to make an honorable mention to his live band; and as one member stood out the most, the rock icon would call him his ‘younger, richer and bolder’ brother.
It was just another rock icon like Robert himself, as he had helped the former Led Zeppelin frontman feature some enhancing drumming on his tracks. The honorary and musical brother of Plant was none other than Phil Collins, as the singer went on to name the drummer one of his best friends in the business while praising his talent.
The rocker’s words on how he saw Phil as his brother:
“Well, Phil Collins has this sort of yen to be a drummer as well as to be a member of Marillion, so he played [on the] first two albums with me, and he toured America with me in the beginning on that first American tour. A great leveling factor, a great sense of humor, and real honest guy.
I think he is probably my best friend in the whole business; he’s like my younger, richer, bolder brother. I love him very much; his influence and his sort of stabilizing on the tour was very good… [And] important at the beginning of a solo career.”
So, it seems that for Plant, Collins went beyond a simple collaborator as he described the Genesis icon as a brother and his best friend in the entire music business. Robert mentioned Phil with such an admiration that it almost matched the ‘American Psycho,’ Patrick Bateman‘s fascination with Collins, and if you’re wondering how that might be, click here to read all about what an ultimate sigma male listens to.
However, there were also a few rockers who weren’t fans of Collins as Robert or Patrick was, as you can also check out the time when Jimmy Page slagged off Phil for the duration of an entire article and discover why the guitar icon hated the drummer so much.
