Robert Plant at the Checkerboard, late 1980s

From MemoryArchive

Who: Robert Plant
What: Random Encounter
When: late 1980s, who can remember
Where: Checkerboard Club, Chicago

This is my only celebrity story. Maybe a dozen years ago, I was with some friends at the Checkerboard Club in Chicago, a legendary but by then overrated blues joint. We were there to see Junior Wells. Now Junior could be great or a disaster, depending on how drunk he was when he came onstage. This was not his best night. Still, we enjoyed the first set.

Between sets Robert Plant walks in with a smallish entourage, just a manager and a groupie. This caused a stir among the white clientele, while the blacks were impressively unimpressed. ("Who is he?" the waitress asked me. "Led Zeppelin? What did they do?") When Junior Wells staggered back out he announced that he was being joined by "a very good friend...good friend...London...who is he? who?...Robert Plant!" Plant jumped on stage and gave a very respectable set of blues, backed by Junior's shaky harmonica and his awesome band. (Every southside Chicago blues band is amazing.)

After the second set some of us went up to Plant to say hello. Alas, the conversation was dominated by my Sting-obsessed friend Justin. "Robert!" he said, "Tell me, did you ever meet STING?" Plant admitted that he had. "Wow! You've met Sting!" my doofus friend exclaimed, as the rest of us (especially Plant) flinched. "What is he like? Are you friends?!"

"Well," Plant said, "Sting is rather the definite article, where as I am an indefinite article."

"Robert, I am not sure I understand you" said Justin, despite being an English major.

"Sting is a 'the' whereas I am an 'a,' " Plant explained. He really was a sweet and patient man, and may have been the only sober person in the bar.

"Robert! I'm still not getting you!" Justin flailed.

Robert Plant put his hand on my friend's shoulder and spelled it out: "Sting. is. an. asshole."