Off the top of my head there is Paul McCartney (the you-know-whos). Peter Gabriel (Genesis), Bryan Ferry (Roxy Music) and, latterly, Morrisey (The Smiths). There are probably many more. Perhaps you can play this very entertaining game on your next dull car journey.
One further entry to this canon must be Robert Plant. His musical alma mater, Led Zeppelin, of course, only lasted 12 years before John Bonham's untimely death brought a sudden end to one of rock's most defining bands. Like Gabriel's eight years with Genesis or McCartney's 'paltry' decade with The Fabs, Plant's Zeppelin history has been both a blessing and the proverbial millstone. He can't avoid it, and on his last tour (which I got to experience in both Paris - at Le Bataclan, a matter of yards from the stage - and at the Montreux Jazz Festival) there was no shortage of Zeppelin material, albeit carefully selected and adapted to the eclectic sound of his diversely-influenced band, the Sensational Space Shifters. But the so-called Zeppelin reunion ten years ago at the O2 Arena (technically it was Plant, Jimmy Page and John-Paul Jones playing together at a benefit for Ahmet Ertegün) - while suitably respectful of the Zeppelin legend - unwittingly whetted appetites for a full revival. Page is said to be still up for it, Jones is apparently non-committal, while Plant...
'Indifferent' barely covers Plant's attitude towards returning to the band he joined in 1968 at the outset of a 12-year lifespan that, at times, resembled more of a military campaign than simply four men playing blues-inspired rock'n'roll (and, in the process, inventing heavy metal). Even last year's legal dispute, in which the LA band Spirit challenged the providence of Stairway To Heaven (claiming a close resemblance to their 1968 instrumental Taurus) brought Plant, Page and Jones together, briefly, without anything more coming from it.
Plant has always been somewhat diffident on the subject of a return to Zeppelin, and in a recent interview with Rolling Stone he maintained his distance: "Um, well, what was once a steady date becomes a cup of coffee. That's basically how it turned out, a cup of coffee from time to time. But nothing intimate," he replied to being asked whether the reunion was like old times. While Plant and his former cohorts could earn tens of millions from a Zeppelin revival, Plant's focus is clearly doing his own thing - enjoying life back home in England, on the Shropshire border with Wales, and pursuing his rock-meets-roots music.
Thus, Carry Fire - released on Friday - continues the eclecticism of 2014's Lullaby And...The Ceaseless Roar - "grooves and moves," he recently describe the album, albeit with a greater rooting in Plant's musical past, indeed to the blues and rock'n'roll of his teenage. There is a subtle mood of contemplation about it, as the recently-turned 69 Plant embraces age and, possibly, even his own mortality, as well as the world around him. Not that it is morbid or stark in nature and he is typically self depreciating about his encroaching years ("I play soccer every Wednesday at 7pm," he revealed to Rolling Stone. "I play till someone says, 'Go in goal – it looks like you're gonna die.' Then somebody brings the defibrillator quick.").
Sonically, The May Queen sets the tone for the remaining 11 tracks, each drawing on reverb-drenched rockabilly, Appalachian folk, the strings and sounds of North Africa, as well as pastoral England. They mark a certain contentment with the form, one that has never settled into anything simple - even his bluegrass tie-up with Alison Krauss, Raising Sand found channels of exploration. There are obvious comparisons to be drawn to Peter Gabriel, especially with the richness of the Sensational Space Shifters' screeches and scratches, bleeps and blurps, many the result of guitarist/multi-instrumentalist Justin Adams, ex-Cast guitarist Liam 'Skin' Tyson, former Massive Attack and Portishead keyboard player John Baggott and the Gambian purveyor of all manner of exotic stringed instruments, Juldeh Camara, separating into their own recording unit to come up with parts of songs to reattach to Plant's core material.
The man who once screamed out "Valhalla!" on Immigrant Song returns to migration with New World..., taking a gentler view of human movement ("In songs we praise a happy landing, on yet another virgin shore") while Adams' guitars screech out a chugging rhythm like angle grinders. Plant expresses his dismay at the current occupant of the White House with Carving Up The World Again...A Wall And... while addressing man's desire for war with Bones Of Saints, both songs constraining any anger while the ensemble's rugged, reverb-shaped soundscapes do as much to express anger as any screaming vocals might have done.
Indeed, Plant's voice - at times an entire register lower than in his Zeppelin pomp - is more like a coating: on A Way With Words it is hushed almost to the point of a whisper, hauntingly drawn over a reluctant-sounding piano. It is in these textures that Plant now plays: even Bluebirds Over The Mountain, a duet with Chrissie Hynde and a cover of an old rockabilly number once done by both the Beach Boys and Ritchie Valens, is given a low-key, looped-up twist that sounds like Garbage doing a hoe-down.
The overall effect of Carry Fire is one of confident maturity. Plant knows he's an elder statesman, but has no need to exploit past glories. Instead he is flying his own kite, boldly, in the way this album's songs are arranged and delivered. It may, at times, sound like Eddie Cochran doing trip-hop, but it is - I wager - utterly unique. And utterly brilliant.
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