Not all ageing rock legends are renowned for their great senses of humour, but Robert Plant was a lot more easy-going than expected when I interviewed him in Dublin a couple of years back. Just not at the very beginning. Wearing a leather jacket, woollen hat and battered snakeskin shoes, the former Led Zeppelin frontman Robert Plant strode purposefully into the residents lounge of the Clarence Hotel and glared at me. “So you’re the guy who wants to know all about my life, are you?” he demanded.

“Em ... yes,” I replied, somewhat taken aback at his aggressive manner.
“Well, let me tell you,” Plant said, stabbing a finger. “I’m 62-years of age and I woke up yesterday morning and realised I’d got these strange voices coming out of my trousers.”
His record company PR and I exchanged nervous glances. This is not quite how we’d envisioned the interview beginning.
“Anyway,” Plant continued, “I went to the doctor this morning and told him about these strange voices in my pants. He took a look and then said to me, ‘I wouldn’t worry about it. At your age these things are to be expected. You’re just talking bollocks!’”
Boom! He burst into laughter and shook my hand. “How’s it going, mate?”
Plant was playing with The Band Of Joy on that occasion, but will be presenting his new act The Sensational Shape Shifters at the Picnic this year. The band include a healthy serving of Zeppelin standards in their set, most notably ‘Black Dog’, ‘Ramble On’, ‘Going To California’ and ‘Rock And Roll’. Indeed, he’s been happy to have ‘The Voice of Led Zeppelin’ on the tour posters. Although Zep were offered shedloads of cash to tour following their reunion gig at the London O2 in 2007 (a show which saw millions of people apply for just 20,000 tickets), Plant has thus far always refused.
“Nah! Fucking hell, otherwise where would I be?” he said, when I asked about the possibility of a reunion during our Dublin encounter. “There’s no pressure anywhere. I mean, the whole deal about my life is it’s a life. It’s not governed by anything. There’s no predictability about what I’m gonna do next. Although I do feel like I’ve found my place now [in The Band Of Joy]. Like the absolute spectrum of possibilities in this combination is so fucking wide, so broad. It’s like you can get tired of shit quite easily I think. People fake it. There’s so many people faking in this game. But if you’re gonna fake it then you might as well sell cars. I don’t have any criteria to live up to. I’m so far away from where I was when I was 30. I mean, it’s like a million miles. Mind you, if I hadn’t have had all that stuff going on until I was 30, you wouldn’t be talking to me. The past creates the present.”
As for the future? Well, Plant has hinted that once The Sensational Shape Shifters have finished their tour, he’s free in 2014…