Robert Plant reveals existence of unopened letter which might have led him to quit music before Led Zeppelin

Robert Plant has revealed that he recently discovered an unopened letter from his mother, posted in 1967, which brought tears to his eyes when he read it, as he realised it could have swayed him to abandon his dreams of becoming a musician had he opened it upon receiving it.

Speaking to Rolling Stone, Plant revealed that he spent part of 2020 sorting through his personal archives and discovered an unopened letter from his mother dating back to 1967, one year before he teamed up with Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham in Led Zeppelin.

“I opened it in 2020, and it said, ‘Robert, you should come home now. Sue is waiting for you, and the accountant’s office are happy to take you back’,” Plant reveals, noting that he had briefly trained as a chartered accountant before opting to go to college instead.

"It brought a tear to my eye," said Plant. "Because I thought, ‘If I’d have opened that, I might have taken it up.’ Just imagine that! I’d be out shooting pheasants somewhere now on the Welsh borders, with a pair of plus-fours.”

“But how ironic that I never opened it – it was a letter from my mom.”

The singer recently spoke of his desire to keep pushing onwards with his music in an interview with The Telegraph. Summing up his time in Led Zeppelin in just three short sentences in the article, Plant said: “We made great music. We had a great time. And then it stopped.”

“I was 19 on the first Led Zeppelin rehearsals, and I was 32 when John [Bonham] passed away, that awful time,” he recalled. “People used to say to me, ‘Well, you must have done enough now?’ Enough of fucking what? ‘Enough to retire!’ So imagine the blessing to be 40 years further down the road, and I still don’t know enough to stop in any respect. There’s always something new to learn, somewhere new to take it. I love it.”

Raise The Roof, Plant’s new album with Alison Krauss, recently debuted on the UK album chart at number 5. The duo’s 2007 album, Raising Sand, peaked at number 2 in 2007.

A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne's private jet, played Angus Young's Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.