Robert Plant has been the quickest to emerge from the ashes of Led Zeppelin and construct a new band, a new sound and, recently, a third album. The record is Shaken 'n 'Stirred; Plant is anything but.

December 4, 1980: Two months after the drinking-related death of drummer John Bonham, the remaining members of Led Zeppelin — the reigning mega group of the 1970s — officially announced their break-up. It was assumed that bassist/keyboardist John Paul Jones would return to his metier as one of Britain's most in-demand sessionmen, while the group's architect, guitarist Jimmy Page, would no doubt flourish in some new venture.

The question mark appeared to be singer Robert Plant. Though his keening voice and impassioned delivery had influenced more progeny than any singer since Elvis Presley, what were the odds of his allying with a partner as gifted as Page? And what would the future hold for an artist with a predilection for Celtic folk music, who regularly tuned in Radio Cairo on shortwave for musical inspiration?

At home in Kidderminster — about 20 miles from where he grew up — Robert Plant was asking himself the same questions.

"When Zeppelin expired," recounts the singer, curled up in a chair at his record label's midtown Manhattan offices, "I was left petrified — alone — thinking, 'Well, what on earth should I do? Is there even a need to do anything, and can I work only being inspired by those guys?'"

As it turned out, unlike the reclusive Jones, and Page, who's gone through his own torment and soul-searching over the same insecurities, Robert Anthony Plant didn't waste much time in finding out the answers.

In 1981 he formed an ad-hoc band, the Honeydrippers, with which to satisfy his love of rockabilly and jump blues, musics he'd only flirted with in Zeppelin. Playing such standards as Albert King's Crosscut Saw and Buddy Holly's Tell Me How in pubs across England, the group enabled Plant to rekindle his enthusiasm for performing, leading to the next step: a new band and new material.

Handpicking musicians was the easy part: Guitarist Robbie Blunt — an old friend and a journeyman who's punched the clock with various UK Blues-Rock outfits — hung on from the Honeydrippers. He recommended bassist Paul Martinez, also a Blues-Rock-circuit veteran. Completing the line up was keyboardist Jezz Woodroffe who'd worked anonymously (literally — behind a curtain) on tour with Black Sabbath. To fill the drum chair, however, Plant relied on a pool of players: Cozy Powell, Phil Collins and Barriemore Barlow. He still ached over the death of Bonham and thus for the time being decided not to work with one drummer exclusively. "I just wanted to keep shifting around," is his simple explanation.

Similarly, Plant saw his solo career as an opportunity to shift musically, not only away from the hard Blues Rock that comprised Zeppelin's foundation, but from album to album. "Half of my reason for doing this," he says, "is for my ego, so now I'm looking to stretch all the time."

The 1982 album Pictures At Eleven, with the bulk of the material by Plant and Blunt, was a testing of the waters and not strikingly experimental. That it went gold spurred Plant to deviate a little more on the following year's The Principle of Moments, the first two singles of which were atypically dreamy and atmospheric, Big Log and In the Mood. But it was the accompanying tour that would truly bolster the confidence of both Plant and Blunt, the latter of whom was still intimidated by the spectre of Jimmy Page. "I was terrified," admits Blunt, on a break from rehearsing the band at the Dallas Communications Center for its two-month summer tour. "I was worried that the audiences were going to start shouting for Jimmy Page, and I was going to wish that the stage would open up and swallow me."

But they didn't, much to Blunt's relief. Even though it was plainly stated before tickets went on sale that Plant and band would perform no Zeppelin material, the 1983 tour was wildly successful, and that, says Plant, "was the ultimate boost, not so much to my confidence as to my raison d'etre. It made me see that I could now carry on."

Which he has done in audacious fashion on Shaken 'n' Stirred, an album that signals a clean break with the past and showcases a compulsively inventive singer/songwriter. Plant's well aware of the record's implications, and remarks that "I tend to grin a lot these days because of it." At 37, he embodies the LP's musical eloquence, looking more dramatically handsome than the peacockish singer of a decade ago. Absent are most of the Rock-star affectations, except for the silver-and-turquoise bracelet he's long worn and a thin wire earring.

"The musical flexibility and capabilities within (Led Zeppelin) were endless... we probably didn't take it as far as we could."

Plant's growth as a musician has never been so palpable as on Shaken 'n' Stirred, a mosaic of interwoven rhythms, hothouse keyboard textures and liquid guitar and synth lines that at times are indistinguishable from one another. Obviously much input came from the instruments, including the group's first permanent drummer, Ritchie Hayward. But the basic direction and sound were dictated (sometimes in the strict sense of the word) by Plant. According to coproducer Benji LeFevre — who's worked with Plant since 1972, first as a Zeppelin roadie, later as a soundman — he's become a complete musician.

"In Zeppelin," he says, "the four of them were so intense, they would spark off one another. But now, because Robert's had so much experience, his influence on the music and his musical understanding have become much stronger. He's now got the final say."

And Plant, who possesses a perfectionist's discipline, is not reluctant to impose it on his musicians. He admits unapologetically, "I'm an intense character and sometimes take people too far, at which point all they want to do is get away from me. But I don't care whether they like it or not; in the end, I'll get what I want."

Robbie Blunt does not disagree. "To be honest," he says, carefully measuring his words, "sometimes I can't face him; he really can wind you up." Blunt encountered the most difficulty with Shaken 'n' Stirred, beginning when Plant told him at the outset that "he didn't want me to sound like me. It was a little disconcerting, because I have roots, and you just can't divorce yourself from them." As a result, says bassist Martinez, during the three months the quintet rehearsed the songs in a rickety little shack in Monmouth, Wales, "There was a lot of fighting and shouting; Robert's not always the best diplomat, and if the music's not right, he can be pretty tough." Moans Blunt, with the type of wry laugh hindsight affords you. "This album was a nightmare."

To begin with, he had to acquaint himself with the Roland GR-707 guitar synthesizer system, which at times, he says, "I was ready to throw it at the wall. You have to anticipate the split-second delay, and to get it spot on in the studio was really difficult. Plus, you get glitches, which aren't so noticeable on stage but are plainly obvious when recording." To compensate, explains Jezz Woodroffe, the band-member most at home with keyboard/computer technology, the GR-707 guitar was mixed with just the straight guitar sound and the GR-700 synth's mono feed. In addition, "We MIDI'd the GR-707 to my PPG 2.3's WaveTerm computer and a Yamaha DX9, so most of the sounds came from the keyboard programs. For example, on the solo at the end of Sixes and Sevens, there's a weird guitar run where Robbie goes up and down the frets. The synth worked out its own way of what would be, and what you get is this incredible chord run going down in semitones, which no keyboardist could play."

Woodroffe's other keyboards on Shaken 'n' Stirred were a Roland Jupiter-8 ("one of the first in England, with a warmer sound than the recent models; good old girl, she is"), a Jupiter-6, the DX9 and a Yamaha acoustic piano. His favourites are the 2.3 of which he owns three, and a Godwin string machine. The latter, manufactured in Italy, is "real cheap and awfully made, but it sounds fantastic. It's got a great, moody sort of sound — which I used on Big Log — but you can also get it really bright."

The Wave 2.3, he says enthusiastically, is preferable to similar machines, such as the Fairlight CMI, because "it's so accessible. If you're using, say, a sampled choir sound, you can instantly get hold of the attack, the decay, the release times and the filter settings, whereas with a Fairlight you have to get into the computer to do that."

If Plant pushed Blunt, Woodroffe and the others to explore new terrain, he was no less demanding of himself, proving that even after 17 years he's still able — and, more importantly, still has the desire — to develop as a singer. In Led Zeppelin he was forced to crest the band's dense volume by howling over it, but here he can poke through the music's spaces, demonstrating more of his vocal arabesques and rounded low range. The famous shrill upper-register belting is conspicuously absent, but not, he emphasizes, because of any lessening of ability.

"I can leap up and hit high notes like there's no tomorrow," he says matter-of-factly, "but I hear so many people using that 'famous high register', that when I do, I like to use a lick of taste and not just as a matter of course." One such moment is on Easily Lead, for which Plant impulsively reverts back to his Zeppelin days with some insistent, rapid-fire scatting, causing him to cackle gleefully at this reprise of his past. And Blunt, temporarily back in his natural element, rips loose with some frantic, Jeff Beck-style soloing. When not using the GR-707, he mostly played a red Fender Stratocaster with Schecter parts and pickups, a maple neck and a Kahler tremolo system. His favourite, though, is a black '56 Strat with a '54 neck, "all stock, apart from brass saddles, and with a beautiful, warm sound; it's the one I used on Big Log and In the Mood.

"When Zeppelin expired I was left petrified — alone — thinking 'Well, what on earth should I do?'"

"Then I've got an ESP Strat with EMG pickups, and it's unbelievable for recording. With some of my guitars, if I'm overdubbing in the control room I have to face due Northeast to get the least amount of noise, but with this guitar you can shake it around like crazy." In the current North American tour, Blunt is also using a stock '64 Fender Telecaster with a B-string bender, and, on Moonlight in Samosa, a Gibson Chet Atkins strung with GHS Silk & Steels. His other guitars, however, are strung with Dean Markleys (.046, .036, .026, .016, .011 and .009), which he began using two years ago and continues to do so. "I've got one hundred and forty sets," he jokes, "so I've got no choice."

Amps in the studio were a pair of MESA/Boogie Mark II-Bs set at 60 watts. Both when recording and when playing live, he uses no effects, preferring to have Benji LeFevre add them from the desk.

Paul Martinez also relies on LeFevre for his effects, playing a recent-model Fender Precision fretless and a stock '61 fretted through two 200-watt MESA/Boogie D-180's, with two Ampeg SVT8x-10" cabinets. The Leicester-born bassist played guitar on several tracks, putting a Fender Jazzmaster through one of Blunt's Mark II-Bs. Basics were put down at Marcus Studio in London, while mixing was done at Air Studios on an SSL console and two Studer A800 24-tracks slaved together.

Plant's vocals were recorded at Rockfield Studios in Monmouth, LeFevre employing an Electro-Voice RE-20 mike. Not only is Plant singing differently, he's being mixed differently, without the stark quality that characterized his voice on Zeppelin records. "My voice always sounded alone and plaintive," he acknowledges, "which was intentional; I wanted to create a feel of the blue side of thing." For this album he and LeFevre settled on a sound "with a modicum of top, rid of all the low-mids, and with as much limiting as the track could take without creating too much sibilance."

When it comes to headphone volume, Plant favours the backing track up all the way, "so that I can weave among the instruments. Every time I do a take, I have to be standing on my tip-toes and clutching lyrics, even though," he chuckles, "I know them all by heart".

For the first time on Shaken 'n' Stirred Plant had another voice to duet with over the course of an LP, that of 20-year-old Toni Halliday, who, Plant predicts, "is soon going to be very au courant; she's singing with Eurythmics at the moment." In Zeppelin, harmonies were as a rule expendable, and when they were used, Plant usually over-dubbed his own parts. Or he bandied with Page's Les Paul or Telecaster, as on the call-and-response shouting that climaxed the first album's You Shook Me.

Plant's singing rapport with Halliday is typically unorthodox. Together they're the antithesis of the sweethearts of Soul, an observation he clearly delights in. Halliday plays a sort of romantic adversary, singing with deliberate dispassion, "absolutely unimpressed by anything, as if she couldn't care less. It's the type of quality the Shangri-Las had," observes Plant, who goes on to explain that he intentionally made the songs' lyrics "trite at times, sort of like Paul and Paula go to the new-music festival, if you like."

Early in their career Zeppelin's band members were often defensive about the constant critical drubbing they received. Vindication came by way of immense record sales (over 50 million albums sold) and a posthumous, changed perspective on Zeppelin, who command more critical respect historically than they ever did during their lifespan. Maybe the spate of one-dimensional, derivative '80s heavy metal bands has something to do with that.

Ostensibly because they achieved so much popular acclaim in the incipient stage of their career, Zeppelin never allowed themselves to be shackled by the inherent limitations of Hard Rock; for them none existed. Plant's and Page's interest in folk music was indulged on Led Zeppelin IV's The Battle of Evermore and most of Led Zeppelin III And when the two travelled to the North Sahara in 1975 and became enamoured of the region's music, the impression it made musically surfaced on subsequent LPs.

"Half of my reason for doing this is for my ego, so now I'm looking to stretch all the time."

"The musical flexibility and capabilities within the unit were endless," reflects Plant; "we could incorporate anything, from Gregorian chants to Gene Vincent." Looking back, Plant offers the surprising opinion, "we probably didn't take it as far as we could have, actually." Whether or not they would have taken it as far as Plant has on Shaken 'n' Stirred is a matter of conjecture which he prefers not to be drawn into. That, he says, he'll leave up to his audience.

Regardless of the quality of his three albums and platinum-selling Honeydrippers/Volume One mini-LP, a sizable portion of that audience will probably never cease clamouring for a full-scale reunion between Plant and Jimmy Page. Plant has never ruled out such a possibility, especially now that he's proved unquestionably that he can prosper on his own. Page, by contrast, has yet to prove that with his quartet with Paul Rodgers, The Firm. Since the demise of Zeppelin, both have had to face the same pressure of transcending a formidable past, and each has shown support for the other.

Before Plant premiered his Pictures At Eleven publicly, he drove to Page's Sol Studios to play him some tracks. It was, he remembers, an emotional encounter. "We sat there together with my hand on his knee, just listening. He knew then that I was off on my own." Page, five years Plant's senior, had long been a sort of musical mentor. When he selected the 20-year-old, relatively inexperienced singer to front the New Yardbirds — soon to be rechristened Lep Zeppelin — in 1968, Page was already a firmly established sessionman who'd played on some of the records from which Plant had studied.

Plant still frequently refers to Page as "the master," and had recently taken his teenage daughter to The Firm's Birmingham concert.

"I was sitting way back, in the cheap seats, and I must tell you that I was weeping, because I saw Jimmy stretching himself as a guitarist; playing all these strange scales and phrases, but in the context of a conventional Rock group. Some of it was off the wall, and I was stunned. I never thought I'd hear him play that well."

Has his being the first to successfully launch a solo career changed the dynamics of their friendship?

Plant says no on both counts. "I think what Jimmy's doing with The Firm is far removed from what Led Zeppelin was. And as far as our relationship goes... it's very dicey. I don't know if we could ever talk about it so analytically, though I know that one day," he smiles, "we will sit down and really discuss what we've both done."

Plant's tranquil smile is one usually reserved for morphine addicts or Moonies. He's realized his goals on his own with a great deal of artistic integrity, and he knows it.

"I do smile smugly," he sniggers. "I should be kicked in the teeth, shouldn't I?"

Actually, yes — for serving as the inspiration for all the godawful Robert Plant imitators that have inflicted themselves on us over the past decade and a half. Doesn't he feel a sense of responsibility?

"As a matter of fact," he laughs, "I do. And that's why you don't hear me doing any of that banshee-wail stuff on the new record."