Almost from the moment John Bonham died and the remaining three members of Led Zeppelin announced the band wouldn’t go forward without him, fans have been clamoring for their return. In 1984, The Honeydrippers gave fans a Robert Plant-Jimmy Page collaboration, albeit one far from what anyone was expecting.
In actuality, The Honeydrippers had originated a few years earlier and then disappeared. A record company executive’s idea resurrected the idea and led to Plant and Page working together, albeit only briefly. Here is the story of this somewhat forgotten project that enjoyed a couple of big hits in the ultra-competitive pop music world of the mid-’80s.
Plant’s Passion Project
The death of John Bonham in September 1980 not only wrote the final chapter for Led Zeppelin, but it also made Robert Plant, the band’s lead singer, question whether he wanted to continue with music at all. Plant had already lost much of his passion for the rock and roll lifestyle in the wake of the death of his son Karac in 1977. Bonham’s death just furthered his ambivalence.
Plant was so disillusioned that he actually applied for a program that would have allowed him to become a teacher. But Professor Plant would have to wait. A few musician friends of his managed to jar him from his funk by reconnecting him to what he loved about music in the first place.
The Honeydrippers, which consisted of Plant and a bunch of musicians that had already played together some before he joined, took on a series of live shows in 1981. They played gigs unannounced in the UK so they wouldn’t draw attention. And instead of hard rock, they stuck to old blues, R&B, and classic rock and roll covers.
The Honeydrippers Rise, Fall, and Then Rise Again
The Honeydrippers’ original incarnation essentially had run its course after those shows in 1981. Plant began to feel better about his career in music because of the experience. He set about developing a solo career, which started in earnest with the 1982 album Pictures at Eleven. The 1983 LP The Principle of Moments followed on its heels.
Both of those records largely backed away from the heavier style of Led Zep, instead concentrating on moodier, mid-tempo songs characterized by Plant’s questing, introspective lyrics. Neither album was a big hit, although they received plenty of critical acclaim.
But then a funny thing happened to resurrect The Honeydrippers. The famed record executive Ahmet Ertegun came up with the idea of a project that would include covers much like what The Honeydrippers played on their low-key ’81 tour. He contacted Plant, who agreed to record a mini-album (five songs) under The Honeydrippers banner.
Paging Jimmy Page
Since the new project had a big budget at its disposal, Plant was free to recruit big names to play on it. Paul Shaffer of Saturday Night Live and Late Night with David Letterman fame came aboard on keyboards, and Chic mastermind Nile Rodgers played guitar. But the biggest “gets” were a pair of incendiary guitar heroes who once played together in the ’60s.
Jeff Beck played lead on “I Got a Woman” and “Rockin’ at Midnight,” the latter hitting the Top 40 as the second single from The Honeydrippers: Volume One, which was released in September 1984. And the weeping guitar that strolls through the band’s Top-10 hit cover of the ballad “Sea of Love”? You guessed it. That’s Plant’s old Led Zeppelin buddy (and Beck’s brief bandmate in The Yardbirds) Jimmy Page.
There has been no Volume Two from The Honeydrippers. As much as Robert Plant enjoyed the experience, he also worried about being viewed as a nostalgia act, which is why he went back to his solo work. But this unique one-off deserves credit if, for nothing else, ensuring that we got a solo career out of this rock legend in the first place.
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