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In New York, Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley first met at the apartment of a mutual friend, and Simmons knew almost immediately that they needed to be in a band together.
At the time, Gene Simmons was playing in a group called Bullfrog Bheer, while Paul Stanley was making music with a man called Steve Cornell – they met, and Simmons thought that Stanley was the kind of artist he could work with for a long time, and while Stanley took some convincing, given he thought Simmons came across as pretty arrogant, eventually they worked things out, and thank god for that.
Call it an artist’s intuition, but you’d be surprised just how much this kind of thing happens in the musical world. Artists will spend years aimlessly wandering around different scenes in the hope of stumbling across someone they can work with, and will end up meeting a fellow musician and recognising that they’re the one they need to be collaborating with. Is it love at first sight? Well, it’s some kind of variation on that.
Jimmy Page experienced as much the first time that he saw Robert Plant play live. He was in the early stages of putting Led Zeppelin together and was struggling to find a decent singer anywhere in London. A friend of his recommended he go check out a young vocalist in Birmingham, and the next thing he knew, he was in the presence of Plant.
Watching him, it was clear that Plant had a real talent, and so Page decided to start working with him. It wasn’t long into the creation of the first album, specifically while working on the song ‘Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You’, that Page knew the two of them were a match made in heaven.
“We had an empathy. ‘Babe I’m Gonna Leave You’ – I knew exactly how that was going to shape up. I set the mood with the acoustic guitar and that flamenco-like section,” said Page. “But Robert embraced it. He came up with an incredible, plaintive vocal. When you’re in a group, you’re trying to bring out the best of each member in that moment. We managed to bring something good out of each other.”
Page wasn’t the only person who was excited to listen to a singer like Robert Plant. Back to that New York apartment, while Gene Simmons was impressed with Paul Stanley’s musical ability, Stanley was also learning new means of singing from the Led Zeppelin frontman. Stanley was still a budding musician at the time and was shocked to find how much range Plant had.
Just on that song previously mentioned alone, ‘Babe, I’m Gonna Leave You’, you can hear all of the different tones and styles that Plant is a master of. When he starts singing, it’s subdued, slowed down; however, as the song progresses, he lets his voice truly fly, as notes up and down octaves are hit with ease. It was performances like this that led Paul Stanley to believe Robert Plant was the greatest vocalist going, and he helped the Kiss singer better understand how to get on top of his range.
“What he was doing effortlessly was mind-boggling to me,” said Stanley, concluding, “Because at that point, my voice didn’t have a lot of range. And I couldn’t figure out how he was opening that door in the back to get to that voice.”
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