Nancy Wilson told Premier Guitar that she once left a Led Zeppelin concert because of Robert Plant’s provocative appearance.
“There was Led Zeppelin, and Jimmy [Page] had his violin bow going and he was doing his echo plex magic playing, pretending that he’s summoning the music out of the air with his echo plex on repeat, which were physical tapes at the time,” Wilson recalled about her first time hearing Led Zeppelin live.
Wilson added, “And so we were like, ‘Oh my God.’ The singer, he’s so suggestive. He’s got his shirts wide open, he’s got his bear chest and his jeans were really low riders and he was moving in this way that was so super suggestive and we were kind of shocked. We’re like, ‘Oh, my God.'”
She continued, “We were in a little folk band at the time. So, we were from the suburbs. So we were kind of square, square little hippie chicks to be unenlightened, let’s just say. And so, they were like, ‘Oh, they’re so loud. They’re just being so suggestive and loud.'”
Nancy also said, “Then, he sang about like ‘Squeeze My Lemon’ and we’re like, ‘Oh, we must leave, we must leave the premises’ because we were just shocked. So, we actually walked out on at the Green Lake Aqua Theater.”
While Wilson admired Plant’s rock style, she wanted to incorporate her own influences into her music. In a Guitar World interview last year, she shared how strong women like Janis Joplin, Aretha Franklin, and Judy Garland inspired her. Despite being told women couldn’t play rock, she and her sister disagreed. “So we were very loud. I guess we just didn’t care,” she said.
Nancy explained, “We wanted to channel the androgyny of rock ‘n’ roll. Guys like Robert Plant looked like really hot chicks, and we felt like we could be hot chicks or hot dudes on a big rock stage like that. Androgyny and a sense of humor were our basic survival tools, because there was no place for us at the time.”
On December 2, 2012, Led Zeppelin was honored at the Kennedy Center by President Barack Obama, as Ann Wilson previously recalled. The event included Ann and Nancy Wilson performing ‘Stairway to Heaven’ with Jason Bonham on drums.
