Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant talks about the death of his son in emotional interview
Robert Plant has spoken about the tragic death of his son Karac over four decades ago.
Karac died from a stomach virus aged just five in 1977 when Robert was on tour with Led Zeppelin in North America, and the singer went on to write ‘All My Love’ in his late son’s honour.
In a preview clip ahead of the Tuesday 13th March broadcast of his interview with veteran US journalist Dan Rather on AXS TV, the host asked Robert to tell him about ‘All My Love’.
“I think it was just paying tribute to the joy that (Karac) gave us as a family and, in a crazy way, still does occasionally,” Robert said.
“His mother (Maureen) and I, often, the memory… changes, the contrast and the focus changes as time goes on. It’s a long time ago that we lost him. 40 years ago.”
“And we were blessed with another boy who came along about two years later and the two images are blurred. The definition between Karac and Logan is - it’s a tough one to chip through the two things, but he was a little nature boy, y’know? He was a mountain man.”
Rather then asked him how coped with the death of his son. “Well it wasn’t easy,” Robert said. “especially in the light of the fact that there’s the whole hysteria that surrounded (Led Zeppelin in) the mid to late seventies. It was anything but conducive to normal family life.
“But we pulled tight together and both my wife and I, we had strong families. And good support, I mean, John Bonham from Zeppelin and his wife Pat, they were magnificent with us and helped us a lot. And we lived pretty close together, a long way from London. So, we were kind of local people.”
“I wrote another song about him called ‘I Believe’ which was on an album in 1992 ('Fate of Nations') and every now and again he turns up in songs for no other reason than I miss him a lot.”
With Rather delicately dealing with the subject matter, Robert was asked what advice he would give to other people dealing with grief.
“Well, as you say, it’s such an individual phenomenon or just piece of real bad luck and I don’t know how many people have been in the public eye to such a garish degree,” Robert responded.
“I know other guys who do what I do who have lost kids and because we’re kind of public property, in a way, our conditions and our luck and our bad luck and our whole circumstances are there for public discussion. That’s how it works, you know? So, when it’s tough, it’s really tough.
“I would just say there’s no advice, just love everything around you as much as you can.”