ROBERT PLANT: “It’s very disrespectful to my personality how people keep telling me to accept Jesus…”
You know, I find it quite disrespectful to my personality and to the journey I’ve lived when people keep telling me to accept Jesus. I’ve walked through many chapters of life—pain, joy, music, love, loss, adventure, and reflection. I’ve traveled the world, studied history, soaked in cultures and beliefs far and wide. At this point in my life, after all I’ve seen, felt, and lived through, it’s patronizing when someone assumes that I haven’t already explored the bigger questions for myself.
I’m not hostile to anyone’s faith. In fact, I deeply respect those who live meaningful, compassionate lives because of what they believe. But what I don’t appreciate is being preached at, especially as if I’m somehow spiritually lost or uninformed. I’m seventy-six years old. I’ve looked into Christianity, and I’ve looked beyond it. I’ve studied ancient texts, embraced the poetic force of mythology, and searched for transcendence in music, nature, and human connection. That’s not ignorance. That’s life lived deliberately.
People tend to project their own fears or hopes onto others. They say, “You must accept Jesus,” not realizing how invasive and presumptuous that sounds when they don’t know you. It ignores the fact that I have my own spiritual foundation. I may not kneel in a church or use the same words, but I understand reverence, humility, grace, and love. These values run deep in me and have done so for decades.
I’m not a man who lives by dogma. I never have been. Led Zeppelin’s music came from that freedom—from mystery, curiosity, risk, and tapping into something that wasn’t always easily explained. Our songs explored the mystical, the mythic, and the raw beauty of emotion. They were about experiences beyond categories. Not sermons.
What I find frustrating is the assumption that because I’m not overtly Christian, I must be lacking something, or worse, doomed. That’s a sad and limited view of the world. We all make meaning in our own way. I’ve found mine in a thousand places—at the foot of mountains in Morocco, in the ruins of Welsh castles, in the silence of dawn in the countryside, in the human voice breaking with truth on a microphone. These are sacred spaces to me.
So no, I don’t need someone to come to me, yet again, telling me about Jesus as if it’s breaking news. I know the story. I know the theology. I respect it. But I have chosen my own path. At this point in life, if someone doesn’t trust that I know what I believe and why I believe it, then they’re not truly listening to who I am.
Do what works for you. Live with heart. Believe in something that brings you peace. But let’s respect each other’s roads. I’ve earned mine. Let me walk it without being told, every day, that I’m on the wrong one.