When one thinks back to the pantheon of ultra-hyped superstars in music history, names that  instantly come to mind as the pioneers of that uber-level of fame are of course Elvis Presley, The Beatles, and perhaps maybe Frank Sinatra – all artists we clearly remember as leading the way as far as the stratospheric hype at the height of their popularity.

One name that might not automatically come to mind, at least not as quickly as the legends above, but one who equaled and in some ways even surpassed the level of fame of those icons at the height of his own popularity, is none other than 70’s pop culture phenom David Cassidy. Yes, the blue-eyed heartthrob and star of “The Partridge Family” was also one of music’s most hugely hyped and globally marketed pop stars, with “Cassidymania” actually outnumbering those four Liverpuddlian mop tops and those two kids from Tupelo and Hoboken as far as actual fan club members, while also selling out 70,000-seat stadiums (a huge feat for an artist back then), headlining at iconic venues like Madison Square Garden (which he sold out in two minutes), and having his likeness on everything from lunchboxes and posters to dresses (yes, dresses) and more.

But David Cassidy gets the fleeting nature of being a pop superstar and is grateful he could have an impact on people during the height of his career, a career that still gets him adoration from fans in the present day.

“You’re only a fresh face once. And everybody, every huge star, including Elvis, including The Beatles and even Sinatra, those were the individuals who I was compared to, because I had the largest fan club in history. Once you understand that, and the impact, it’s an incredible thing for me now because I hear it and I get it from people almost every day, I get it back in spades. It’s a really wonderful thing to know that you’ve impacted people’s lives in a positive way. You brought light, you brought joy, you brought happiness, and a certain imagination.”

Forty-plus years apart from his time at the top, David Cassidy still retains some of that intense pop singer popularity, if not at the level it was back then, but to the surprise of many also continues to have a modestly successful career into his 60’s, including singing, acting, and even giving time to a cause near and dear to his heart:  Alzheimer’s disease awareness. These days, Cassidy is a very busy man, always on the go and with a rigorous tour schedule that includes a stop this Saturday at one of his personal favorite venues, Alexandria’s own Birchmere, as he takes his audience on a musical journey of his life, replete with those classic Partridge Family hits.

So whatever happened to the early career of the then-world-famous “Keith Partridge-esque” version of David Cassidy? Cassidy’s fame would turn out to be a double edged sword — as he became a huge star on The Partridge Family, his career as a pop star would also rise to almost unheard-of levels, and during our very candid interview on the phone from New York City, Cassidy spoke honestly about why he simply left that part of his life behind, right at the height of his incredible popularity.

“I walked away. What most people don’t realize or didn’t understand at the time, the last world tour when I was playing stadiums, I lived in this eye of the hurricane for five years. I worked 16 to 18 hours a day, 7 days a week. I was mentally and physically exhausted, literally every lunchtime I was doing interviews and photo sessions, I never had a free moment for me. So I announced that I was gonna leave it at the top, at the time I was playing to 50-60-70 thousand people. I’m the guy that walked away. I knew there was no way for me, ya know, ‘can you top this, can you top that’, physically and mentally I just couldn’t sustain it. I was really the first globally marketed individual, and I got robbed of my own identity by the marketing and the visual of watching me on that television show, and comic books, everything you could possibly imagine. [The Partridge Family] was the biggest selling and most financially successful television show of all time at that moment. Much of it had to do with the many millions and millions of albums and singles, I mean, my first three or four albums were triple platinum. It’s nutty! So when you’re thinking in terms of…it was global. Everywhere in the world I went, it was impossible for me to separate…have the public perceive me as me, so I walked away from it.”

A part of having that huge level of fame was having famous friends, and none was as famous as John Lennon. Cassidy recalls with much affection and fondness his burgeoning and eventually lasting friendship with the famous Beatle.

David Cassidy and friend Yoko Ono watch John Lennon record (photo courtesy fotomundo.net)

“John and Yoko had a friend who was a very close friend of mine, and he brought John over to my house. He just walked in, and it was New Year’s Eve, and I remember I was in the kitchen and Susan Dey [who played Cassidy’s sister Laurie Partridge on the TV show] tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘David, there’s a Beatle in the house!’ Later, we would go into my music room, we start playing, and I of course instantly go back to the early Beatles songs that I first learned, and since then he had written another 500 songs and hadn’t played with the Beatles in however long, so I retaught him a couple of the early Beatles songs! Please Please Me, some others. John was musically my hero, but what I also loved about him was he had a remarkable sense of humor, a great passion for life. He’s probably the most unique person I’ve ever met. To get to meet him, to get to know him, to get to play with him. And I remember one of the most amazing compliments I ever heard, they were asking John about the early days of The Beatles, and he said, ‘Oh don’t ask me, I don’t remember, ask David Cassidy, he was bigger than we were.’  I read that and I went, ‘Oh my God, how did that happen?’ It was such a great experience for me to get to know him.”

After walking away from his immensely popular pop star persona, Cassidy didn’t work for close to three and a half years. Least not in the pop star mode, that is.

“I wrote and I produced music, but I didn’t try and compete with my fame. I tried to go back to what originally had made me successful, (my acting), and I went back and worked in class and in theater, and I began carving out a completely different career. I knew I could never compete with that time.“

Cassidy was clearly one of the better actors on The Partridge Family along with stepmom Shirley Jones, but that’s no surprise considering his early acting resume, which included appearances on iconic 70’s TV shows like Ironside, Marcus Welby MD, Bonanza and Adam-12, all before his turn as dreamy Keith Partridge.He would even be nominated for an Emmy in 1978 for an appearance on NBC’s Police Story. Clearly, the acting bug cultivated by his father, accomplished actor/singer Jack Cassidy, was a talent he inherently possessed, and as his father would remind him, talent was what it was all about.

(Photo courtesy Heinrich Klaffs)

“My father gave me some advice the day I was playing Madison Square Garden. He’d been in the business at the time about thirty years, I’d been in it only about three or four years. His words to me were, “Talent is the only commodity that survives. Talent will survive. Someday this is all gonna go away, and it’s gonna get very difficult for you. So do not ever, ever, give up on that.’ ”

And give up he hasn’t. In recent years, Cassidy has overcome personal challenges including substance abuse, remaining consistently active in his musical and acting careers throughout the years, and showing no real signs of slowing down.  His pursuit of a lawsuit against Sony regarding the rights to his likeness continues (“It’s just a matter of, in my opinion, extraordinary greed”), and he has also become a passionate and involved advocate of the Alzheimer’s Association, not surprising given that his mother Evelyn has the disease.

“My mother (who’s 89), she’ll utter a word now and then, you have to ask her five times. What’s so sad about it, is that years ago before we were really understanding the disease, it used to be like, ‘Oh there’s crazy Uncle Eddie”, they called it senility. Well, it’s in fact a disease. And we’re about to face an epidemic. We’re nearly there because the eldest baby boomers reached 65 years old in 2001. The truth of the matter is we should have been doing this thirty years ago, now we’re trying to play catch-up when we’re about to face a tidal wave.  Knowledge is power, we need to just, like, open the doors, and go, ‘Hey, it’s OK.’ We understand. This is a disease, you can’t help it, it’s not your fault.’ It doesn’t choose individuals with higher intellect, or by color or creed or anything else. It’s just a horrible, horrible disease. We gotta act. We gotta act now.”

Links:

David’s website is at  http://www.davidcassidy.com/blog/

Visit the Alzheimer’s Association:  http://www.alz.org/

As Neil Young once sang, “It’s better to burn out, than to fade away.”

And ol’ Neil was dead on, the life and career of a rock and roll star always seems to take one of two paths.

One is arguably the more common road:  the rock star gets famous, then as they get older, and as they desperately cling to the lingering remnants of glory days past, the bygone aura they try to reproduce never measures up to what it once was. They can even slowly lose their chops and things begin to disintegrate, no one really cares, and they sadly fade away into oblivion. Sad, but all too true.

Or something special happens. The rock star stays dynamic and active into their later years, their chops remain intact and even improve, they find ways to positively collaborate with their equally legendary peers, they accept their place in rock history and embrace their legacy and actually capitalize on it, and their fans, well, they show that they really do care about the music. It’s rare, but it does happen.

That kind of rock star in scenario two is Greg Lake. To borrow from the most famous song he ever wrote as a member of prog rock gods Emerson, Lake and Palmer, oh what a lucky man Lake is, even forty-plus years after he began his illustrious career. During a recent long chat from London, the amicable and engaging  64-year-old Lake sounded vital, vibrant, excited and ready to go full speed ahead on his soon-to-begin “Songs Of A Lifetime” tour, which hits The Birchmere on April 24^th and will joyously celebrate music from his King Crimson and ELP days while he also shares stories and anecdotes from his storied past.

“Part of the reason that I’m doing this,” Lake told me in his perfectly prototypical English rock star accent, “is that I’m just coming to the end of writing my autobiography, and I don’t want to be too high-minded about it but it’s the story of my life, and it’s been quite a remarkable life in a lot of ways.  When I was writing all of this, as I was going through, I noticed certain songs would come up, and they were pivotal to my life and my career.  And it occurred to me that all of these together would make an interesting concert.  And it’s not just my songs, but songs that other people had written and recorded as well.  And each song has a story attached to it. So that was the idea for the tour we’re calling ‘Songs Of A Lifetime.’”

Lake will also seek out involvement from his crowds on the tour because he clearly realizes that his  career has only been possible thanks to the fans that he has gathered over, lo, these many years. It’s an adept  realization that only the most self-aware musicians truly understand.

“I’ll give the audience a chance to participate because this is a journey that I was only able to take because they made it possible. It’s a journey we’ve shared. People often come up to me and say things like, ‘Oh Greg, Brain Salad Surgery (ELP’s classic gold record from 1973) got me through college.’ So this particular show is something I wanted to do, partly to coincide with the book, but partly because I wanted a chance to share, in the most personal way, the journey we went on together. “

Lake’s illustrious career remains one of rock’s most stratospheric and successfully long lasting even amidst some typical bumps in the road most rock and roll paths often contain. He met keyboardist Keith Emerson first in the early 70’s while in the groundbreaking prog rock ensemble King Crimson, and then shortly afterward, the pair was introduced to drummer Carl Palmer by legendary music impresario Robert Stigwood.  Shortly after, in a simple London flat, ELP was born.

“[Stigwood] said, ‘Just give [Palmer] a try, I’m sure you’ll like him.’ So a day or two later, we rented a little room in SoHo in London, it was almost like the front room of someone’s house. We put the gear in there and we played, and instantly, we knew that the chemistry was right. The room just lit up, and the music was electrifying. It was obvious to all three of us that this was the band.“

So why did bands like King Crimson and ELP take their sound in a new and largely uncharted progressive rock direction, rather than the more hard rock genre that many bands of the day had become successful at? Simple, really…to be different and get noticed.

“At that time, the currency in the music business was originality. You needed to be original and different to stand out. In those days if you were to play an album by any of the great artists of the time – Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, Jethro Tull, you name it – in three seconds of playing the record,  you would know who you were listening to. They all had an identity and a personality. And King Crimson realized that we needed to be different. And we also realized that most bands looked to America and to American musical roots for their inspiration: the blues, country-western, gospel. We decided that we’d be better off to look in a different place, and that place was in European classical music, basically. Our roots were more European than they were American. And that was the real difference in how progressive rock music developed. It wasn’t using those same 12 bar formats, we were using the influence of classical music, which was many different things and had elements that were not at all related.  So you had music which had no form, effectively.  And people called it progressive because it really didn’t have a bag you could put it into.  It wasn’t one of the normal forms of rock music. And despite what some may think, it did have a huge influence on rock music in the latter part of the 20^th century. People still write to me, people like the Red Hot Chili Peppers, they’re huge fans. “

From the beginning, the expectations for ELP were huge given the talent assembled. And the band lived up to those expectations from the start and kept their “Fanfare For The Common Man” going for a highly successful yet relatively short period of time.

“ELP was a different matter than King Crimson because when ELP first started, the moment we started, we were labeled with this title of supergroup, because Keith and I had come from well-known bands. It felt as though we were the sort of ‘sons of famous fathers’, born with the silver spoon in our mouths, but that was far from the truth. Both Keith and I spent years and years on the road – the term used is ‘paying your dues.’ And we certainly paid ours. But when it came to ELP, it was almost as if the band were a success before it played a note, which really wasn’t the truth. The people decide whether you’re going to be popular or not, and they liked us and that was the end of it.”

The place where ELP really broke into the stratosphere was the legendary Isle of Wight Festival in 1970, where a who’s who of the day gathered a year after Woodstock in one of rock and roll’s first true large festival settings. And ELP blew the massive crowd away and were on their way to superstardom.

ELP in their rock god hey day (L-R: Keith Emerson, Greg Lake, Carl Palmer)

“Anybody who was anybody was playing at that festival  – The Who, Jimi, everybody.  And we got up on the stage and it just went very, very well. There were three hundred thousand people who all  stood up and it was undeniable. We realized that we cracked it when we walked off the stage. The next day, we were the front page of every newspaper you could imagine, we were world famous. It wasn’t that we’d come from nowhere all of a sudden, of course it wasn’t an overnight thing. We’d worked hard for years building up our careers with King Crimson and [Emerson’s band] The Nice, and  eventually we ended up with ELP. And once we had exploded, it was only a couple of years until we were playing 60,000 seat stadiums.”

A short anecdote of those rare formative days that might pop up on Lake’s upcoming tour talks about some of those aforementioned soon-to-be-legendary British bands of the day meeting up at a classic English roadside hangout at all hours…well, let him tell about it. You can just imagine what that must have been like.

“There was a motorway restaurant, a truck stop, called The Blue Boar on the M1, and that’s where all the bands used to stop on their way going north or south on tour at the time. You could stop in there at three o’clock in the morning, and you would always see The Who, The Stones, The Small Faces, us, other famous bands, everyone would be there, it was incredible. They’d all be coming back from Liverpool, Manchester, and that’s where we all used to eat.”

After a string of gold records and worldwide fame for ELP led to more huge crowds, including almost 200,000 at the big California Jam concert in 1974, tensions in the band largely due to a disagreement on the direction they would take caused ELP to take a two year hiatus even though they were enjoying immense popularity and financial success.

“Just prior to us recording Works Volume I, I think Keith felt that he had blown every chord in his head. I think he felt that he done everything he could with synthesizers, within the confines of a three-piece band. We had escalated the show, each time we came back to play a tour it would be bigger, it would be more dramatic, we ended up at one point with eleven tractor trailers on the road. 140 people. The show was massive, it was enormous. Today you see shows like that with bands like U2, but back then, that was a really pioneering thing to do. And we reached a point where we just didn’t know what to do next, I think was the truth of it. And Keith had the feeling that the way to go was symphonic, he was hell-bent on doing a piano concerto. So we decided to go down the orchestral route, and I think in a way it was the beginning of the end of the [original] period of ELP. The early albums had something special about them in a sort of fantasy way that was not there on any subsequent album.”

After recording the classic double LP Works Volume I and then embarking on what turned out to be an ill-fated and financially disastrous heavily orchestral tour, ELP broke up for the first time after their next album Love Beach was released. Lake grows a bit wistful when he talks about his wish back then that the band could have held it together amidst the growing discord.

“Personally, I really would have liked to have continued and tried to face the challenge of finding a way to make another record in the same way as we had made Trilogy, Brain Salad Surgery, Tarkus. These albums were really fantasy records, and I personally never tire of making that sort of music.”

In subsequent years, Lake did a brief stint in the British supergroup Asia, recorded some well-received solo material and collaborated in the studio with some of his peers, and even reunited with Emerson for an album and tour as Emerson-Lake. Palmer joined his two former bandmates and the original lineup briefly regrouped in the early 90’s for two albums and a tour, but soon after, old issues arose and ELP dissolved again, returning one last time in 2010 with another final ELP appearance at a British festival and an unplugged Emerson-Lake tour following that as their swan song, at least for now.

Lake on tour with Ringo Starr and his All-Starr Band

In addition to the brief ELP & EL reunions, Lake’s life in the 21^st century has been charmed, with highlights like playing in Ringo Starr’s All-Starr Band (“he’s such a great guy and that band was lovely”), recording with The Who (“that was a strange experience”) and jamming onstage with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra and Jethro Tull among others. He has also headlined benefits with Roger Daltrey and Robert Plant for the Teenage Cancer Trust.

And yes, sure, it’s a stock question, but what would be Lake’s favorite ELP song, especially to play live? I think you know his answer, but maybe not everything about it’s history.

“Well, I love playing Lucky Man, just because it was such an unforeseen hit. But it was a throwaway. I’d written this sort of medieval minstrel song when I was just a young kid, I was 12 years old when I wrote it. And I wrote it about this sort of medieval knight or very wealthy person, you know, what a lucky man he was. But then, the irony was that he got in a fight, and he died.  And so, how lucky was he, really? And the strange thing was the song started to take on all kinds of interpretations, people would even  put parallels on it to the war in Vietnam. But it was written in a very naïve way. “

Deep down, Greg Lake mostly appreciates just being on the planet, let alone being able to play his classic music for those who love it. And that kind of appreciation of life and music is something that comes through strikingly when talking to him, and is sure to come through on his upcoming “Songs Of A Lifetime” tour.

“I’m grateful to be alive. I value each day, highly. The older you get, the more you do. And now, it’s coming to the end of that career really, hopefully not too soon, but I know I won’t be able to play forever. I’m grateful for a fantastic career.  But in the end, music is a spiritual thing. It comes from the soul of one person, it passes through the air, into the soul of another person. And that’s what’s great about music, I think it’s all about intent. If you’re sincere about what you’re doing and you play it with passion and feeling, it’s received with passion and feeling. That’s really the essence of it. And if I lost that, I’d stop playing.“

One of the most anticipated moments of the week when I was a youngster was reading the Sunday Arts and Leisure section of The New York Times. Growing up in a very creative, theatrical, arts-oriented family, it was always a thrill to peruse the huge full page Broadway show and movie ads and well-written reviews,  and later, the beautifully rendered concert ads for bands that I had become an early fan of.  An unusual passion for a kid, but not surprising given who my parents were and what our family was all about.

One Sunday in 1977 when I was 16, I turned the page and was greeted by a sight that took my breath away: the page was all white, except for the familiar winged-angel-figure dead center that unmistakenly symbolized the great Led Zeppelin, and at the bottom, the absolutely stunning news: they would be playing Madison Square Garden in a matter of weeks, and there was a mail order form for tickets sitting right there at the bottom of the page. Oh my God. Having been immersed in Zeppelin’s music for a year or two, punctuated by their 1976 double live opus The Song Remains The Same, this was it, THE concert, the biggest one of our young lives by a long shot. Having attended concerts and sporting events at the legendary NYC venue several times, and knowing it was only a 45 minute train ride away from my Connecticut town, I pleaded to my Dad to let me go and then to “loan” me the money to pay for four tickets. Being the overly generous soul he was, he didn’t hesitate. Off in Monday’s mail went a self-addressed stamped envelope with a check for around 50 dollars in it (yes, the tickets were $9.50 apiece plus handling) and the wait was on.

Truth be told, with all that is going on when one is 16 (raging hormones, new driver’s license, high school, life exploding around you), I kinda forgot about sending for the tickets, until one day a couple weeks later, an envelope arrived in the mail, with my writing on it, addressed to me. For a moment, I was baffled what it was, why was I getting a letter that I wrote to myself?  Then the adrenaline began to flood my body, and upon opening up the envelope, I found four small green tickets, my Charlie Bucket Golden Ticket moment: yes, it was really happening, these were tickets to the Led Zeppelin concert on June 8th, 1977 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. I yelped out loud and quickly chose three friends to privately ask the next day at school. “Boys, we’re going to ZEP at the Garden!” John Kaczmarczyk, Bob Funnell and John Chapman were the three comrades who would join me, mainly because they were the three guys whose parents would let them go, and the anticipation began.

The one and only Madison Square Garden, NYC

A few weeks later,  it was the day of the show, a school day, and the excitement was palpable. The plan was to meet right after school over at the corner of Catalpa Road where my Dad would drive us to the train station and we would begin our journey over the hills and far away to see one of rock and roll’s biggest acts live. Unfortunately,  John “Kaz” had made a truly moronic and potentially disastrous decision earlier that day during F period: he was compelled to draw — OK, pardon me, but it’s true — a large penis on the wall in one of the stairwells of the high school, with the tasty added touch of mayonnaise coming out the end. Nice. As I said earlier, 16 year old hormones were raging, but jeez, what a way to express that, good lord. Unfortunately for Kaz, English teacher Bob Moore caught him in the act, and swiftly yanked him to the principal’s office where he sat dejected on the “bench” in the outer office awaiting his penalty. The first bell to end the day sounded, and as me and my two other concertgoing pals bounded past the principal’s office, John looked panicked behind the glass wall, shrugging his shoulders in a kind of “I don’t know what to do” gesture as we ran past. We arrived at my Dad’s car as he asked, “Where’s Kaz?” and we told him what happened. He had to laugh, and said, “Well, we’ll give him a few minutes, but you guys need to make that next train.” Just then, we saw Kaz bound out the side door in a full sprint to the car, yelling “Go, go, GO!” Just then, the loudspeaker sounded: “Will John Kaczmarczyk report  immediately to the office please…John Kaczmarczyk to the office, NOW!” John hurled himself into the back seat of our Volvo, slammed the door, and my Dad hit the gas and we took off down the road. Whatever punishment would have to wait, Led Zeppelin was waiting for us down the tracks, and nothing would stop us now. The train ride was as magical as it would seem to be to four sixteen year olds riding into the world’s biggest city to see the world’s biggest band. We made it from Grand Central Station to our seats, pretty darn good ones too, in good time, and sat in wait for this monumential occasion in our young lives.

The great Zeppelin did not dissapoint. The lights dimmed, and from the then-very-cool pyrotechnics, to the astounding solos, dizzying fretwork and double necked guitar mastery of Jimmy Page, to the thundering booming drum rhythms from the maniacal John Bonham, to the stunning bass and keyboard layering from John Paul Jones, this was a band clearly in it’s prime and we were giddy to be there with them.

But it was that lead singer, the golden maned, ultra tight jeaned, masterfully shrieking and wailing lion of a man — Robert Plant — who stole the show for me, and many others to be sure.  From the opening cymbal crashes of  The Song Remains The  Same, through the FM radio nirvana of  Stairway to Heaven (I had to elbow John K awake as this started, he was a bit out of it due to some recreational fun we’d had early on in the show),  to the acoustic beauty of  The Battle of Evermore, and every single song in between, Plant was the centerpiece of this performance, strutting and undulating and boo-boo-boo-boogeying his way around the stage like the sexually startling front man he was, stalking and posing like the human version of a male lion that he emulates, a strong, powerful, dominating presence, and an astonishing sight to us 16 year old boys who idolized him. I can see him right now standing in waist deep dry ice smoke singing the opening refrain to the epic tune No Quarter – “close the door, turn out the light, you know they won’t be home tonight”– his open palm turned out to the side, other hand on his hip, with Jones’ mesmerizing keyboard pulsating behind him, wow, I am right back there at the Garden again right now just recalling it. It still ranks as one of my top 3 favorite concerts of all time out of hundreds, and it was Robert Plant who is seared in my mind as the star of the evening, not surprisingly. The band encored with a thunderous Whole Lotta Love, and halfway through, we realized we had about 20 minutes to make the last train back home, so we reluctantly left the venue, four teen angels flying down the neon lit streets of the big city back to Grand Central Station to our waiting train, literally hurling ourselves into the car just as the doors closed. Exhausted, elated, dumbstruck by what we just saw, we knew we’d experienced rock and roll heaven, with a memory etched forever in our souls.

That was 34 years ago this June. So much life has passed since then, for both the great Robert Plant and me. Since then, I’ve graduated high school and college, been married twice, had two kids of my own and helped raise two stepkids, lost both my parents, and maintained a 27-year career. Hell, I even survived a cancer scare. Life has been a whirlwind since that June evening in 1977, but a fabulous life it has been overall, and still is.

For the legendary Mr. Plant, life would also be a whirlwind, albeit for him as the legendary rock star he became. He would lose a son to illness a month after our Garden show, eventually break up the band in 1980 following the death of drummer Bonham (two events that would stun and sadden me during my college years) after taking Zeppelin to the height of rock and roll superstardom,  embark on a solo career that would take several different machinations over the next 30 plus years, even attempt a couple of Zeppelin pseudo-reunions, some which would largely fall painfully short but one or two that would remind people of Zeppelin’s awesome power and creative force. Yes, life would be a potpourri of ups and downs for Robert Plant since that Garden party we had in 1977.  

But arguably the most creative and self-satisfying period in his post Zeppelin life would pair Plant up with an unlikely cast of characters, unlikely at least for him. The first successful suarez was with bluegrass queen Allison Krauss and producer T-Bone Burnett in 2007-2008, with the result being the multi-Grammy winning, critically acclaimed project Raising Sand, a gorgeous collection of bluegrass, R & B, folk and country songs unlike anything Plant had ever done. But it worked. And Plant seemed rejuvenated and satisfied.

In 2009, he tried to replicate the magic again with Krauss and Co., but the magic just wasn’t there, so he veered off from going down the exact same path by partnering with multi-talented alt-country cult favorite Buddy Miller and creating The Band of Joy in 2010, touring with the band before recording the stunningly familiar but original Band of Joy album, which contains everything from Los Lobos, Townes Van Zandt and Richard Thompson covers to Plant/Miller originals and arrangements of traditional folk-esque ballads, and features a new female presence, respected singer/songwriter Patty Griffin. The album was named one of Rolling Stone’s top albums of 2010, and once again, Robert Plant had taken a different path but found not only commercial success, but he had made music that satisfied him and made him feel positive about where he is today, something many longtime musicians struggle with and often fail at as they head towards the twilight of their career.

Well, Robert Plant and I met up again last night, this time about 4 or 5 hours away from Madison Square Garden, at DAR Constitution Hall in DC. Alot has changed since we were last in the same room together; jeez, we’re both lead singers now, albeit on way different levels. But being in the same room with him again was another totally exhilarating experience, albeit not as a young rock and roll God (although damn, he still exudes that aura because it’s friggin’ Robert Plant for God’s sake) but as an older man who has found exactly where he wants to be in his musical life, shunning the need to be another classic rock act rehashing the hits of yore, and finding new musical avenues while also giving his longtime Zeppelin fans a taste of how he wants to present that classic music of yesterday for us today.

After a truly splendid yet oh-too-short opening set by brothers Luther and Cody Dickinson of the fabulous North Mississippi All Stars (see my previous blog for my interview with Luther) which was chock full of Mississippi blues, a Dylan cover and just some damn good fuzzbox swamp music that these boys are so damn good at, Robert Plant and his Band Of Joy took the stage, and you could feel it. You could feel that we were back in the room with this rock God, sure, in a different place and in a different feel, but it was him. 

And they opened with…ha…Black Dog. Even though this new version of the classic Zeppelin slammer was not the version we all know and veered towards a more folky, countrified style, dang, it was Robert Plant doing friggin’  Black Dog, dammit, with new muse and ultra sweet-voiced Patti Griffin backing him up, and this new band was churning through it, and yeah, it was glorious. Sure, it would befuddle some Zep fans who want the original, but get a life, folks. This is how Robert Plant wants to do Black Dog these days, and he should be able to do it any way he wants.

Next up was a reworking of a Plant solo tune, Down By The Sea, followed by one of my favorites from the Band of Joy record, the Los Lobos cover Angel Dance. Plant sounded in great form on this sweet yet burning tune, as mandolin and bass powered it along. Another major Zep fave, Houses of The Holy, would follow, possessing the skeleton of the FM metal chugger of yore but with the new band sound, including Griffin’s beautiful voice dueting with Plant, and some pedal steel on the main riff to boot, with the crowd responding very positively to it as they would to the Zep tunes all night.

A great version of Uncle Tupelo’s Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down followed, a haunting song also on Band of Joy, and then the middle of the set had Plant graciously relinquishing the lead mike to some of his talented cohorts, with Griffin (Move Up), guitarist Darrell Scott (A Satisfied Mind) and Miller (Somewhere Trouble Don’t Go) all taking  turns on songs of their own, mixed in with a couple more Zep gems (Tangerine was really sweet, as well as part of In My Time of Dying which cropped up in a medley), a cover of the great Richard Thompson’s House of Cards, also from Joy, even a turn on Low’s Monkey.

After the great Barbara Lynn tune Can’t Buy My Love, another gem off Joy, Plant did a pretty-true-to-the-original Tall Cool One from his solo career, making the “Lighten up baby, I’m in love with you!” refrain sound just like the 80′s FM hit that it came from. Then it was time for easily the best Zeppelin cover of the evening, Ramble On, which was as dead on a version as you could have asked for, with great exotic guitar work from Scott and more sweet vocal help from Griffin. Sure, the reworked versions of the Zep tunes were cool, but OK, I’ll admit it was nice to get one Zep cover that was taken right from the original. The crowd sang along gloriously with each “Ramble on!” Plant uttered. It was the rock god back in our midst in his original form. That was followed by another Zep classic that really suited the new sound: Gallows Pole. The more folksy, rootsy original sound of this nugget really jelled with the new band and it was a rousing end to the main set. The band returned with a very sweet, mellow take on my favorite Robert Plant solo tune In The Mood, I had wondered silently earlier in the evening if he might roll this, and my wish was granted. Then, the band launched into a great countrified version of Zep’s Rock and Roll, and yeah Robert, it’s been a long time since we rock and rolled together, for sure. The very special and very unique experience ended with an a cappella classic, the Grateful Dead’s concert closer And We Bid You Goodnight. It sent me out into the sleety night basking sweetly in not only my reunion with Robert, but also with melancholy thoughts of Jerry Garcia, who I had heard do that song with the Dead many years ago.

Three decades had passed since I had my first night with Robert Plant, and all these years later, well, he didn’t dissapoint again. In fact, he triumphed. Been a long time since we rock and rolled, Robert, and as we wind on down the road once again, I bid you good night, and good luck, and thanks for another glorious evening with your one of a kind music. Ramble on.

Here is last night’s full setlist along with different versions of the songs they played: http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/robert-plant/2011/dar-constitution-hall-washington-dc-63d2c67b.html

Guessing which career Luther Dickinson ended up with is easy after hearing what kind of childhood he had.  “My father once told me, “You got a car, and a guitar, and an amp. Go see what you can hustle up.”  So…did you guess what Luther’s doing these days? I bet you came close.   

Luther’s the lead guitarist, lead vocalist and driving force behind the fabulous North Mississippi All Stars, who have made their mark and more on the blues-rock & jam-band scenes over the last eleven years, beginning with their Grammy nominated debut, “Shake Hands With Shorty” all the way up to the release of their latest 2011 studio release, “Keys To The Kingdom.”  In between, it’s been a semi-meteoric rise of sorts for the uber-talented Mississippi-born trio, all the while keeping very true to their roots by putting out a sound that’s one part true Mississippi blues and one part fuzzbox power trio rock and roll. But where did their sound come from?

The musical indoctrination of Luther Dickinson and brother Cody, the band’s drummer, co-songwriter, vocalist and instrumentalist, began while growing up in rural Mississippi. The boys’ father Jim Dickinson backed up Aretha and Dylan as a session player, played piano on the Stones classic “Wild Horses” (Jim’s quoted in Keith Richards’ recent bio, “Life”, talking about the making of the song) and produced the Replacements’ alt punk epic, “Pleased To Meet Me”, so yeah, music was all around the boys from the start.  Fourteen year-old Luther learned some of his now-lauded chops studying the Replacements’ groundbreaking leader Paul Westerberg as he played and wrote songs during Dad’s sessions. Oh, and there’s mom Mary, who taught Luther how to tune his guitar and worked for music pioneer Jerry Wexler at Atlantic Records. So be damn sure that most of the Dickinson brothers’ love of music is definitely steeped in their genes. 

The Dickinson family at home in Mississippi: (L-R) Luther, Jim, Cody and Mary.

Jim Dickinson was an instrumental part of the All Stars’ birth and evolving sound, but unfortunately, he died in 2009. Luminaries across the music community mourned the loss of the legendary elder Dickinson, but no one more than his sons; in fact, the All Stars latest record is largely dedicated to their daddy, he is credited as the album’s producer even though it wasn’t started until after he passed away, and many of the songs deal directly with the loss of their Dad. But looking back, Luther is clearly thankful to his parents for cultivating such a musically open childhood that paved the way for his passion to take shape.

“They allowed us to do our thing in our late teens and early twenties, it was such a cool and creative environment,” Luther told me in a recent interview. “We were at the house just experimenting, messing around and gettin’ our act  together, with all these amazing musicians around.” 

But Luther’s true calling came from neighbors who lived just up the road. A virtual who’s who of Mississippi hill country blues legends including R.L. Burnside and Otha Turner, as well as Fred McDowell and Junior Kimbrough became an intimate part of the Dickinson’s musical life, and hugely influenced the boys’ already rich musical upbringing. Luther’s first paying gig was backing up Burnside on tour.  

“I was into all types of music…then I realized there’s modern day Mississippi country blues just down the street! I had liked only the old, old blues, but this music was so deep and funky, it appealed to me so much,” he said. “So I said to my own band, ‘OK fellas, we’re gonna start a new band, we’re gonna play these old blues songs’, and everybody’s like, ‘What? Huh?’”  

More than a decade later, Luther, Cody and bassist Chris Chew are playing hundreds of club and festival dates a year, putting on a truly blistering live show full of their scorching roots-based originals as well as the occasional cover. Luther also has been a key member of none other than the Black Crowes for the last few years, giving the popular rock band another jolt of guitar power along with founder Rich Robinson, while also keepin’ things rockin’ with his first love, the All Stars.

Speaking of guitar power, Luther was recognized by Rolling Stone magazine as one of it’s modern day “Guitar Gods” with longtime Rolling Stone writer David Fricke saying that Luther has “soloing that coats Duane Allman and ‘67 Cream in real Mississippi dirt.”  Not bad for a wiry guitar playin’ kid from ol’ Mississip’. 

“[Being recognized by Rolling Stone] was just amazing man, it just makes you feel like you haven’t been wasting your time, and maybe the future will be alright.”

Oh, the future is gonna be just fine, Luther, even if it’s coated wall to wall in that beautiful thick Mississsippi mud.