Despite being a noble profession, the idea of a ‘wedding singer’ has become a term thrown around like an insult by those who see themselves as above the blue-collar crooners. It’s used to describe a singer who merely rocks up, sings other people’s songs, and leaves with the cash in hand without doing any of the footwork. No one could ever accuse Robert Plant of being that, but for one track, he pointed the finger at himself.

It all goes back to the very start of the band. In the mid-1960s, Jimmy Page was jumping from band to band. After leaving the Yardbirds, he couldn’t seem to settle into a consistent lineup. Seemingly, neither could his peers as for years, they all swapped places, moving between various groups as bands traded members like playing cards. By 1968, that was starting to get exhausting. Page wanted to settle into a group and properly get to work rather than wasting time constantly on a recruitment drive to find some new drummer or singer.

That’s when he heard about Robert Plant, and the rest, as they say, was history. With Plant’s voice at the helm, the band instantly found their signature sound. They also already had a number of great songs as Page had been squirrelling some of his best work away for the right moment, able to truly hit the ground running when Led Zeppelin finally formed in the shape the world knows them as. Alongside John Paul Jones and drummer John Bonham, the troupe formed an incredibly tight and powerful unit.

But Plant always felt somewhat inferior simply because he was a singer. Unlike many other frontmen, he never picked up a guitar or sat down at a piano. Plant was always just behind the mic stand.

It’s where he works best, as his voice is undeniably one of the most powerful and influential voices music history has ever heard. Occasionally, he would dabble on the bass, and there is video evidence that he can play guitar, but in the world of Led Zeppelin, he never did. His role was the singer, so that’s what he did.

It was a job he did incredibly well, and no one would ever doubt his worth in the band. But every now and then, a level of doubt would creep in when he’d look around at his band, hear their incredible talent and wonder what he was bringing to the table.

It especially came up when creating the track ‘Achilles Last Stand’ from the album Presence. “With ‘Achilles Last Stand,’ the music — I was so fortunate to be around so many amazingly gifted players,” he said of the song. But in his mind on the song, it’s a powerful band of three, and then he stuck at the front.

“If you think about Led Zeppelin as being a trio, really, with a kind of wedding singer stuck at the front, that’s how [I saw it],” he said in an incredible self-deprecating comment. “I always saw the reality of what was going on. My enthusiasm was a good contribution, but in truth, those guys were amazing,” he continued.

To look at it in a more positive light, rather than it just feeling like a sad, self-doubting streak in Plant, it’s beautiful to see a frontman honour the talent of the band like this. So often, all the attention falls on the singer as the star of the show, but in his mind, the power of Led Zeppelin always came down to them as he said, “The interplay and the melding of the musicality of those three guys on that track is insane, absolutely insane. It’s magnificent.”