Good Prince Bad Prince

“I make music because if I don’t, I’d die. I record because it’s in my blood. I hear sounds all the time. It’s almost a curse: to know you can always make something new.”

Prince [1991]

It’s always fascinating to encounter an artist who needs to make art to live. The most successful documentary of last year, the excellent ‘Becoming Led Zeppelin’, showed Robert Plant to be such a person, all the more striking as it is in contrast to the great musicians who are Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham. Dedicated and talented as those three are, Plant is qualitatively different. You can see that music is the air he breathes. He recently performed in Eastbourne with his new band and, whilst he performed a couple of Led Zep songs to please the crowd, he was trying new things, singing with Suzi Dian and their band Saving Grace, playing folk and Americana, still exploring as a 77 year old. Like a shark who needs to keep moving forwards to live.