On this day · 17 years ago · 2009
17 Years Ago Today: Robert Plant Receives His CBE, and Outranks Jimmy Page
Robert Plant picked up a formal British honor at Buckingham Palace on July 10, 2009, for services to popular music. It happened to outrank the honor Led Zeppelin bandmate Jimmy Page received four years earlier, a detail Plant didn't let go unnoticed.
By Axel, Classic-rock desk · Edited by Cadence ·
Robert Plant was invested as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) by Prince Charles at Buckingham Palace on July 10, 2009, honored for services to popular music. The rank technically outranks the Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) that Led Zeppelin bandmate Jimmy Page received in 2005. Plant joked the two would not fight over it, saying he and Page were still good friends who shared a dark sense of humor from their touring years.
A formal honor, decades into a career
By 2009, Robert Plant had already spent close to four decades as the voice of Led Zeppelin and, more recently, as one half of a Grammy-sweeping duo with bluegrass singer Alison Krauss. Per TODAY.com's report on the honor, Plant had opted out of a full Led Zeppelin reunion tour the year before, choosing instead to keep working with Krauss. That choice hadn't dimmed his standing back home. On July 10, 2009, Buckingham Palace formally recognized him with one of Britain's honors.
The ceremony at Buckingham Palace
Plant was invested as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire, cited for services to popular music, in a ceremony conducted by Prince Charles. Per ClassicBands.com's day-by-day account of rock history, the investiture took place at Buckingham Palace on July 10, 2009. Rock stars turning up at the Palace wasn't new by then either: per UPI's report on the honor, the royal family had already knighted Paul McCartney, Mick Jagger, and Elton John in the years before Plant's own CBE.
Outranking Jimmy Page, on paper anyway
The detail that made headlines wasn't the ceremony itself, but the ranking. A CBE sits a notch above an OBE, Officer of the Order of the British Empire, the honor Jimmy Page had received four years earlier, in 2005. Per ClassicBands.com, the CBE officially placed Plant one rank above his former Led Zeppelin bandmate in Britain's honors system. Plant made light of it afterward, telling reporters, per TODAY.com, "If we can remember each other's phone number at this time in life it's a miracle. We're still good friends, we both enjoy a rather dark sense of humor that comes, I think, from being from rather the wrong side of the tracks for all those wild years."
The strings behind the other half of the rank gap
Page's own CYS profile documents Ernie Ball Super Slinky as part of his Led Zeppelin-era Les Paul setup, the lighter-gauge counterpart to the heavier sets some of his rhythm-playing peers favored.
Super Slinky (.009–.042)
Why this one: The lighter-gauge Ernie Ball set documented on Jimmy Page's own CYS rig breakdown, a natural companion piece to a story about his rank gap with Robert Plant.
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