Veteran Rock 'N Roll Demigod Has New Release
By Bret Gladstone
For The Associated Press

Outside of being the title of his newest release, "Mighty Rearranger" serves fairly well as a neat synopsis of Robert Plant's career evolution.

After all, of all the blues mutations that form rock history, it was Led Zep-pelin's witch-brew of sweltering plantation angst and black magic world psychedelia that was the most compelling. Compelling enough, at least, for many musicians to sit back on their couches in a pool of their own congratulation and slowly dissolve into the self-parodies that the rock gods have coupled with infamous expressions of their distaste for longevity.

Yet despite his documented reunions with Jimmy Page and, congruently, his Dylanesque willingness to revisit his pantheon of hits in a live context, Plant, 56, has never been much for what he calls "the old pals act." He might, however, be less sensitive about the issue than some think.

"The past is dissolving into the right place for me," he says, grinning, "moving back out of the main picture. Things are coming into really good focus."

Plant speaks with equal enthusiasm about his upcoming U.S tour, while lamenting the fact that it will prevent him from "watching the first almond trees blossom in the Atlas mountains,'' which is indicative of the spontaneous romantic poesy he will launch into while discussing his affection for North African music.

"Morocco came as a kind of, as a gift really," he said recently. "A friend of mine was a singer in a band, and he'd been to Marrakesh in about 1971. He said, 'You've got to go. You've just got to see this place.' Marrakesh is quite tidy now. But then, it was an incredibly romantic place to be. The sounds that were around me were amazing. And that was it. I was done for then. And you know, English singers, really, most of us just wanted to be blues men. We just wanted to play, we just wanted to be in that era.''

Sitting between the excesses of the '60s and the convoluted debacle of the '80s, it was a trip that Plant at one point called a reintroduction "to the basic theory and principle of music."

Over the bubbling electronica of the song "Tin Pan Valley'' from "Mighty Rearranger," Plant whispers, "I've found a new way out'' before the song ironically bursts out of its futuristic atmosphere into a quintessentially Zeppelin, riff-heavy workout between Clive Deamer's shuddering drums and some of the first real vocal histrionics on an album that leans more towards controlled intensity.

Plant seems to appreciate the ab-surdity of being one of the few rock demigods to be alive amid his own accrued mythology, treading lightly around the debris of anthologies, tribute bands and a "heavy metal'' legacy that becomes more fractured with each subsequent death trip.

He speaks purposefully about "taking the challenge of being relevant rather than some 50-year-old jukebox," and believes that it's possible for an icon to have a past, present, and future like anyone else.

Thus, with the Led placed firmly in a subconscious from which it emerges in all the right moments, "Mighty Re-arranger'' finds Plant still walking what he calls the "fantastic, straight beautiful diagonal from the desert of Mali to Clarksdale, Mississippi.'' Embroidered with the singer's perpetual folk fascination, the album builds off his Moroccan obsession while maintaining the sex and swagger, light and shade of Zeppelin's deep blues, working less to juxtapose those sounds than to cleave into what Plant sees as a shared soul.

"I heard the blues in the musical scales of Morocco,'' he says. "Especially in the country music from the mountains, I heard the blues...It kind of becomes a hybrid between rock 'n' roll and desert music.''

He pauses, smiling again. "But those guys have just got it down, it's amazing. And in the middle of it all, they plug these instruments that we use, called a gimbri, a three-string, catgut-driven granddaddy of the guitar. They plug it into an old amplifier that's pow ered by a car battery, and then they put the thing behind their neck and play, like Hendrix. Amazing."

Later that evening, standing at the exit of the building, he talks about a series of small club dates he will perform in the ensuing weeks to preview the album and warm up for the summer tour.

"It's not Madison Square Garden,'' he says almost apologetically. "But one gets tired of singing into the darkness."