When you think Led Zeppelin, you probably don’t immediately picture emotional, operatic, slow cinematic scores.
Yet a musical soundtrack piece with romantic lyrics and soaring vocal highs has been singled out by Robert Plant as his favourite song of all time.
Appearing on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs – the long-running series where guests pick eight songs they’d want with them if stranded on a desert island – Plant selected a variety of tracks that he felt reflected key moments in his life. But when pressed to choose just one song he’d rush to save from the waves if they were threatened by the water, he chose to “definitely” keep Mario Lanza’s ‘Serenade’.
The ‘Stairway to Heaven’ singer added: “Because it’s so evocative and it carries so much presence and beauty and it just lifts — the crescendos there are.”
“I mean, imagine singing along with that until you got it right,” Plant gushed.
‘Serenade’ is the title track from the 1956 film of the same name, which follows Damon Vincenti – a humble vineyard worker who becomes a world-famous operatic tenor, entangled in romantic drama between a Mexican bullfighter’s daughter and a high-society patron.
The film is heavily melodramatic and features operatic music performed by Mario Lanza.
“When I was invited to do this programme, I started looking at something that I would say wouldn’t be the runaway train,” he explained. “It would be something that made me just stop and feel the goosebumps. And this was the first song that did that to me.”
As for the other seven songs on his list, they spanned rock, blues, ska, Indian cinema, Malian desert blues and even a track from his own collaboration with Alison Krauss.
He picked Eddie Cochran’s rockabilly anthem ‘Pink Peg Slacks’, the blues of Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘I Ain’t Superstitious’, and the infectious energy of Baba Brooks’ ‘Teenage Ska’.
He also included Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s protest classic ‘Ohio’, and from the world of Indian cinema, he chose Mohammed Rafi’s ‘Raha Gardishon Main Hardam’. Then came ‘Diaraby’, the collaboration between Malian guitarist Ali Farka Touré and Ry Cooder, and finally one of his own tracks – recorded with Alison Krauss -, ‘Your Long Journey’.
For reading material, Plant chose The Penguin Book of Earliest English (Anglo-Saxon) Poetry and Verse, saying: “These magnificent riddles that you would have to try and fathom out. If I’m going to have a lot of time, I’m going to make some notes in the sand as to what I think it is.”
And his luxury item was “a beautiful wicker basket with three pairs of Black Country homing pigeons,” to keep as companions and, if necessary, couriers.