The story goes that swans are silent their entire lives, then cry out once, only when they are dying.
It’s not a true story, mind you—swans are loud and make grating honk noises—but it’s pretty and sad, and that’s why we hold onto it. In 1974, Led Zeppelin named their sparkling new post-Atlantic label Swan Song in tribute to the (untrue) swan-death myth. The label’s logo, a winged, brolic angel crying in pain, is taken from a painting done in tribute to the swan-death myth. The actual myth is Greek, and says that in ancient times, just before Apollo’s birth, a flock of swans circled overhead exactly seven times, singing. Apollo was the god of music; his birth was a glorious event and swans announcing it seems just right. But at some point the story got flipped. A "swan song" is now a death cry—a wrong, ironic meaning that’s now forever part of the Zeppelin story. D’Angelo emerged a couple weeks ago in Tennessee and covered Zeppelin, a glorious event. Somethingsomething Jesus, resurrection, the people rejoicing. The part in D'Angelo's story where the irony comes in is when he put out an album in 2000 with songs about hair pulling and ass smacking (track 3), and something about wetness and thighs (you know the track). The label that released it: Virgin.
D’Angelo’s set at Bonnaroo contained nothing from Voodoo except for a snippet of "Chicken Grease." But because it's D'Angelo, earnest and sober (I think?) and in front of some keys, the audio from the show is still on daily rotation in my headphones thanks to the download link that’s not too hard to find (GO NOW, if you haven’t already GO GO GET IT GO). The setlist contains nothing surprising—Mayfield, The Time, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, Parliament of course. The Beatles’ “She Came in Through the Bathroom Window” fits in especially nicely, with its weird words and that great drum break after each bar. But it’s his version of Led Zeppelin’s "What Is and What Should Never Be" that lifts the set into next-levels territory. The track bangs, yes, satisfying my heart's need for grown-man emo and my lower body’s need for bass. But it also satisfies my hungry nerd brain, because its back story makes it such a logical choice for him to cover.
A D’Angelo-Zeppelin meetup was probably bound to happen. Voodoo was recorded at Electric Lady studios; most of Zeppelin’s albums were mixed there. Jimmy Page and D’Angelo are both Rhodes guys, calm and bosslike on the instrument. Robert Plant and D’Angelo each had unpleasant periods involving car crashes and general coke mayhem. And "What Is…," a dreamy little number at its beginning, settles into that mid-tempo BPM that D'Angelo always slays so easily. "Devil's Pie" has a BPM of 90; "Me and Those Dreamin' Eyes of Mine" is 87. "Lady" is 85, and so is the Zeppelin song. "Do do, bop bop a do-oh," wails Plant at the end of it. The part could be lifted from a Soulquarians vamp session and you wouldn't know the difference. "My my my my, my-my yeahhh." You wouldn't know the difference. D'Angelo and Robert Plant are men who are both fluent in Rural Southern--even though the commonwealth of Virginia is a little too close to Yankee territory for it to be taken seriously as a bluesy place, and Plant is from a town in the English midlands famous for its carpets.
D’Angelo is uncomfortable with his burden of sexiness. I know this from reading Questlove interviews. His public persona is almost swaggerless when it comes to sex (almost). Plant is much more comfortable with his aura of steam and lust - he wrote "What Is..." during his Tolkien-obsession phase and somehow managed to inject unsexy hobbit mythology into Sonny Boy Williamson-esque heavy-riffed gut punchers that he'd sing to willing, sexy girls in the third row. Plant became obsessed with Welsh culture in the late '60s, druids and the like, mysticism, paganism. (Today is the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, when pagans have historically witnessed the sunrise at places like Stonehendge, marking the event with ceremonies celebrating fertility. So, this post could've just as easily been about D'Angelo and Spinal Tap.) The thing in the song that "was" but that "should never be," according to rumor and speculation and this is as good as the gospel to music dorks, is, hold up now: Plant's relationship with his wife's sister. Well goddamn. The theme of forbidden desires could therefore link Zeppelin's "What Is..." with every D'Angelo-tagged post on MediaTakeout (D'Angelo's own forbidden desires being, of course, narcotics, fatty food and mouthsex). But this is too easy, too shallow. It's more interesting to consider that Tolkien, like D'Angelo, grew tired of the fans who loved his dumbed-down work. He saw himself primarily as a scholar, not a fairy-tale writer, and he hated that The Lord of the Rings was his biggest success. He would not have cared for Robert Plant's great fondness for Mordor.
Written in a Tolkien haze, the thing that makes "What Is and What Should Never Be" so satisfying as a song covered by D'Angelo of all people is the very specific type of alienation shared by the two men. They are both people whose messages get distorted when they try to talk to us. "Everybody I know seems to know me well," goes the closing verse, with the punchline being that nobody who bought their books/albums actually does. For D'Angelo it was his abs, for Tolkien it was his fantasy writings; they both felt a deep resentment for being praised for what they felt were their least important achievements. Tokien's Hobbit and LOTR were his attempt to construct what he referred to as a "body of myth" - which happens to be exactly the same phrase used by ladies in describing D'Angelo's form in the "Untitled" video, much to his dismay.
I am neither a pagan nor a Pentecostal at this point. Things are still cloudy for me, belief-wise. Though if God actually exists he will obviously one day fulfill my dream of hearing D’Angelo do the Ohhhh, oh-oh-ohh-ohh-OHHHH to open "D'yer Mak'er." Its BPM is 90. He'd kill it.
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