Al Jourgensen recently shared why Robert Plant has been in his ‘douchebag column’ since their first meeting in Chicago during the 1970s.
He recalled in a chat with former Louder writer Kiran Acharya, “I was working at the Wax Trax! record store where I was the new guy. Everyone was going to see a concert and I had a date with a girl, but because Zeppelin played Chicago that night, I had to keep the store open for Robert Plant and his entourage.”
“They kept me there until about one in the morning, playing records, me running around like his fucking man-slave servant,” the Ministry singer continued. “Finally, this stack of fucking records comes up to the counter and he says, ‘Just put it on my tab, man.’ I was thinking, ‘Fuck you! I have to call up the owner. I can’t just give you this shit.’ I wound up leaving there at about two in the morning and blew my date with this chick.”
Jourgensen said in the past that Led Zeppelin and ZZ Top had a big influence on Ministry’s sound. But despite that, his sympathy for Plant took a major hit after their first meeting.
“I was like, ‘Goddammit! What a douchebag!’ He’s there yelling at me, the poor little clerk who doesn’t set the policy, when the owner got on and told him he could have 25 percent off,” the frontman added.
“He wanted them for free. There was this back-and-forth with me taking the brunt of his assholism, and I missed my date with the hottest girl. It was just a mess. So, I put Robert Plant in the douchebag column.”
Other musicians have also mentioned Plant’s habit of buying new music, but their experiences were often more positive. Steve Albini once noted that the singer bought “as many as fifteen records a week” and “impressed” him with his “genuine enthusiasm for music.”
Led Zeppelin stopped making new music in the early 1980s, but Robert Plant revisited the band’s work with a remix of their songs ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and ‘Kashmir’ in May.