Going to Q107

Last Friday the Jason Bonham Led Zeppelin Experience was here in Toronto in advance of their show Saturday night. They appeared on Kim Mitchell's afternoon drive time radio show, where they played Going to California:



Nice mandolin playing Stephen LeBlanc!

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For those unfamiliar, Kim Mitchell was the frontman for a seventies band called Max Webster, and had a successful solo career in the 80's. Unfortunately, seventies rock star, successful 80's solo career in Canada means day job in 2011. Rock and roll just doesn't pay the same up here as it does elsewhere.

Not being a fan, one of my favourite moments on his radio show was when he was interviewing Robert Plant during the Mighty Rearranger tour, and Plant gave a classic sarcastic response to what he perceived to be a stupid question.

Jeff Woods Talks to Robert Plant

Here in the Toronto area, Jeff Woods has been doing the Legends of Classic Rock on Q107 radio for years. He's a known entity as a top notch rock journalist and radio personality.

When Robert Plant did his recent rounds of media in support of his new album, Band of Joy, he did lots of TV and newspaper, but no radio. It wasn't accidental, as Plant intentionally decided to do no radio interviews. Woods, and Legends of Rock, wouldn't take no for an answer and got the only radio interview with Robert Plant on his recent promotional tour.

A little background - let me tell you, getting Robert Plant to speak to radio stations, was not an easy task, despite it not being the first time I sat down across from him to talk music. You see, he’s not a fan of commercial radio any longer. Getting asked for the millionth time about his old band getting back together no doubt part of the problem. In fact Robert didn’t want to speak to commercial radio stations, PERIOD, and so none were granted interviews this time around.

Taking no for an answer is not something Legends likes to do, so with the efforts of Universal Music Canada, we pushed until in the 11th hour, we got the green light, the ONLY such approval for commercial radio in North America, apparently.

Despite our usual approach being recording audio and video, as we’ve done in recent months with Carlos Santana, Rush, Bachman/Turner, Ronnie Wood, and others, – in this case, for reasons unknown – no video. We figured audio was better than nothing at all, and so on the 16th of September 2010, I walked into the Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto with my recorder and there he was, ready to go. After making a joke about really enjoying Supertramp on the radio that morning … followed by the punchi-line: ‘with the volume turned to zero’, we got down to talking about how his new album came together …

You can hear the interview in it's entirety here.