Robert Plant Shares a Sweet Tribute to Phil Collins on His Birthday

Robert Plant took a moment yesterday (Jan. 30) to share a sweet tribute to friend Phil Collins on his birthday.

Plant took to social media and shared a photo of himself with Collins. He captioned the image, "To my dear friend who gave me so much help at the beginning of life after John Bonham. I send love and birthday wishes."

Collins famously drummed on Plant's first two solo albums: 1982's Pictures at Eleven and 1983's The Principle of Moments. On the other side of the coin, Collins infamously sat in on drums during Led Zeppelin's ill-fated reunion at Live Aid in 1985. Jimmy Page contests to this day that Zeppelin's set was poor because of Collins. In Oct. 2021, he told U.K.'s The Times, "We had two hours’ rehearsal, not even that, and the drummer just could not get the beginning of 'Rock and Roll.' We were in real trouble so that was not very clever."

Of course, there are two sides to every story. Collins told Classic Rock magazine in January 2020, "I didn’t rehearse when I got there, but I listened to ‘Stairway to Heaven’ on Concorde. I arrived and went to the caravans, and Robert [Plant] said: ‘Jimmy Page is belligerent.’"

Robert Plant apparently has a history of kindness. During his book tour in support of My Effin' Life, Geddy Lee recalled how Plant reached out to him during a trying time.

Lee said he and Plant first met while the two were vacationing in Morocco at the same time during the mid-90s. They met for dinner and got along really well.

Cut to 1998. Plant reached out to Rush's management to get into contact with Lee. Even though Rush's management thought it was a prank, they forwarded the message to Lee along with a phone number Plant left. It turns out that Plant wanted to invite Lee to his show with Jimmy Page in Toronto.

He also wanted to touch base with the Rush singer/bassist since the band was on hiatus. The five-year hiatus of Rush began after Neil Peart's 19-year-old daughter, Selena Taylor, was killed in a car crash in August 1997. Less than a year later, Peart's longtime partner, Jacqueline Taylor, died from cancer in June 1998.

When recalling talking to Plant, Lee said he told the Led Zeppelin singer that he didn't know if he would be up for going to the gig just shortly after Peart lost his partner.

Lee noted, "And [Plant] said, 'Look, I've had my own share of loss, and you have to get on with your life, and sooner is better than later. I want you to come down, call Alex [Lifeson] up, just come down.'"

Lee said he and Lifeson ended up taking up Plant on his offer and that he and Page "couldn't have been nicer to us." He noted the gesture "really lifted us, at a moment when we could have used the lifting."

Robert Plant’s post-Led Zeppelin career has been a wild series of adventures down different artistic and stylistic paths. The man does not rely on his history and he certainly doesn’t want to reproduce it.

Indeed, Plant has spent the past four decades exploring new sounds… and sometimes, some very old ones, often combining the past and present in surprising ways. It doesn’t always work, but you never feel like his albums are done on “cruise control.” There’s intent and vision behind every Robert Plant release. And give the man credit: he doesn’t just follow the money (hey,  imagine how much he could have gotten for a Led Zeppelin reunion tour). 

As he’s releasing his long-awaited second album with bluegrass artist Alison Krauss, we decided to look back at his entire post-Zeppelin career, including his collaborations with Ms. Krauss, Jimmy Page, as well as a few others. You may not be familiar with every song on this list, so consider yourself lucky: now you can go on YouTube and find some gems that you hadn’t heard before from one of the greatest singers rock and roll has ever known.