title: Timothy Olyphant

text: Raylan Givens has been described by many television critics as the "defining role" of Olyphant's career. Brian Lowry of "Variety" said it was "an unabashed star turn": "There are surely worse ways to be pigeonholed than playing tough, laconic lawmen, and Timothy Olyphant is carving himself a formidable niche in those confines ... It's an enormously appealing performance." Tim Goodman of the "San Francisco Chronicle" praised "an incredibly riveting performance": "Olyphant's steely gaze, Zen interior and matinee looks called to mind a younger Clint Eastwood." Daniel Fienberg of "HitFix" described him as "a tremendously compelling actor. It's not that he thrives only on minimalism, but he gets a lot out of a little. His performance is about potential energy, or potential violence. And Olyphant does "intense and coiled" to perfection." Matthew Gilbert of "The Boston Globe" said: "It's hard to imagine any other actor in the part, as Olyphant milks Raylan's smooth, laconic cowboy style for as much wry humor as he can. He is riveting without a lot of noise — both his body language and his conversation are pared down, and yet his presence is always resonant." Although Olyphant was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series in 2011, he and the show were often perceived to have been "snubbed" by Emmy voters. Matt Zoller Seitz of "Vulture" suggested this was because it was "the kind of performance that almost nobody recognizes as 'acting.' It's an old-fashioned movie hero performance in which much of the emotional action is internal and articulated with great subtlety." Similarly, Robert Bianco of "USA Today" commented that his "masterfully complete immersion in the role seems to have masked the talent expended playing it."


title: Timothy Olyphant

text: Olyphant also served as a co-executive producer on "Justified", working with Graham Yost and the writing team on some of the show's storylines and coming to the set on his days off to work with guest stars. He has described producing as "the greatest thing about this job." Yost has said of his producer credit: "Often on shows that really doesn't mean much. On this show it actually doesn't reflect the depth of his involvement, which would be an even bigger credit. Tim is the biggest reminder for everyone that we're in the Elmore Leonard world. And that it needs to be funny and dark and twisted, and it needs to speak with all of those voices at the same time." "Justified" was awarded a Peabody Award in 2011.


title: Timothy Olyphant

text: Olyphant made occasional guest appearances on comedy television shows during "Justified"s six-season run. He played a paper salesman in two episodes of the NBC comedy "The Office" (2010), after Mindy Kaling, a writer, producer and actress on the show, pushed for him to make a guest appearance. In 2012, he played a character billed as White Sushi Chef in an episode of the FX sitcom "The League" (2012) and voiced a character in an episode of the FX animated series "Archer". In 2013, he appeared as a love interest on the Fox comedy "The Mindy Project". The guest appearance came about after he told Kaling that he wanted to appear on the show and he later said he would have been happy to play his middle-aged skateboarder character for "years."


title: Timothy Olyphant

text: Olyphant also worked on numerous films in between seasons of "Justified". He voiced the Spirit of the West in the animated film "Rango" (2011). The character was a parody of Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name and Olyphant was cast after director Gore Verbinski overheard him speaking on television: "I just sort of doubled back and looked through the door and was like, "That's our guy" ... Timothy has such a great quality to his voice." Olyphant appeared as a mentor to Alex Pettyfer's character in the science-fiction thriller "I Am Number Four" (2011). Justin Chang of "Variety" said he "brings some of his usual edge" but Betsy Sharkey of the "Los Angeles Times" felt he was "an untapped resource." Also in 2011, he voiced a character called Sergeant First Class "Grinch" in the video game, "". In 2013, he appeared as Jeff Garlin's father in the independent comedy "Dealin' with Idiots" and took part in a one-off LACMA Live Read of the black comedy "Raising Arizona" (1987); he played Nicolas Cage's character while Amy Poehler played Holly Hunter's character. In 2014, Olyphant starred with Tina Fey in the ensemble comedy-drama "This Is Where I Leave You". Their characters were teenage sweethearts until an accident left him with a mild brain injury. The film received mixed reviews, with David Edelstein of "Vulture" commenting: "Over the course of his career, Olyphant has given life to head-slappingly bad material, and he does it again by simply underplaying."


title: Timothy Olyphant

text: Olyphant had a recurring guest role, as a fictionalized version of himself, in the Fox comedy "The Grinder" (2015–2016). His performance received positive critical notices, with "USA Today"s Robert Bianco declaring it an "Emmy-deserving performance." He won the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Guest Performer in a Comedy Series. In early 2016, Olyphant starred in the world premiere of Kenneth Lonergan's comedy "Hold On to Me Darling" at the off-Broadway Atlantic Theater Company. His character, Strings McCrane, is a self-absorbed country singer and actor who returns to Tennessee, after his mother's death. Ben Brantley of the "New York Times" found him "entertainingly irritating" in a performance that "avoids the obvious route of histrionic posing": "The startling, bona fide sorrow that Mr. Olyphant brings to [the final scene] truly illuminates everything that has come before." Frank Rizzo of "Variety" felt his performance was "a stunner, striking just the right notes of guilelessness, obliviousness and narcissism to make Strings one of the most appealing messes in a long time." David Rooney of "The Hollywood Reporter" felt the role "seems tailor-made for his laid-back swagger and sly humor ... Olyphant's natural charm ensures that Strings' unapologetic self-absorption remains more human than monstrous." He also played Henry, the ex-husband of Sandy (Jennifer Aniston), in the universally panned ensemble romantic comedy "Mother's Day" (2016) and appeared in Oliver Stone's "Snowden", as a CIA agent who befriended Snowden prior to the latter's departure to Russia after his leak of classified documents.


title: Timothy Olyphant

text: In February 2017, Olyphant began starring in the Netflix horror-comedy "Santa Clarita Diet", and also served as an executive producer for the series, which co-starred Drew Barrymore. Netflix renewed the series for a second season in March 2017 and for a third and ultimately final season in May 2018. "Dark Was the Night", an independent drama in which he starred with Marisa Tomei, was filmed in 2015 and premiered at the 2018 Galway Film Fleadh.


title: Timothy Olyphant

text: In early 2016, HBO announced that David Milch was developing a two-hour film continuation of "Deadwood". The long-awaited follow-up to the television series began production in October 2018. "" premiered on HBO on May 31, 2019.


title: Timothy Olyphant

text: In 2017, it was reported Olyphant would portray an FBI agent in the film "Driven", though he ultimately did not appear in the film. In 2018, Olyphant was cast as a voice actor for the stop-motion animated film "Missing Link", which was released in April 2019. He was also part of the large ensemble cast for the Quentin Tarantino semi-historical film "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood", which was released in July 2019. Olyphant portrayed TV western star James Stacy in the film.


title: Timothy Olyphant

text: In 2020, Olyphant appeared as Cobb Vanth in the second season of the Disney+ space Western "The Mandalorian". In 2022, he reprised the role in the first season of "The Mandalorian" spinoff series "The Book of Boba Fett".


title: Timothy Olyphant

text: Olyphant has been married to his college sweetheart Alexis Knief since 1991. They live in Westwood, Los Angeles, and have three children.


title: Timothy Olyphant

text: From 2006 to late 2008, Olyphant was the sports reporter for Joe Escalante's morning radio show on Los Angeles' Indie 103.1; film director David Lynch served as the show's weatherman. Olyphant phoned the station every weekday, delivering his reports in an unconventional style. Following the station's demise, he joked: "If you know of anyone looking for sports reports from an actor who is often just going off of what he recalls happened yesterday, or reading it directly from the newspaper, then I'm your guy."


title: Timothy Olyphant

text: He is also a keen tennis player, and has participated in many pro-celebrity tournaments. He is a fan of the Los Angeles Clippers and the Los Angeles Dodgers, and he threw out the ceremonial first pitch at a Dodgers game in 2013.


title: Armenian genocide

text: The Armenian genocide was the systematic destruction of the Armenian people and identity in the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Spearheaded by the ruling Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), it was implemented primarily through the mass murder of around one million Armenians during death marches to the Syrian Desert and the forced Islamization of Armenian women and children.


title: Armenian genocide

text: Before World War I, Armenians occupied a protected, but subordinate, place in Ottoman society. Large-scale massacres of Armenians occurred in the 1890s and 1909. The Ottoman Empire suffered a series of military defeats and territorial losses—especially the 1912–1913 Balkan Wars—leading to fear among CUP leaders that the Armenians, whose homeland in the eastern provinces was viewed as the heartland of the Turkish nation, would seek independence. During their invasion of Russian and Persian territory in 1914, Ottoman paramilitaries massacred local Armenians. Ottoman leaders took isolated indications of Armenian resistance as evidence of a widespread rebellion, though no such rebellion existed. Mass deportation was intended to permanently forestall the possibility of Armenian autonomy or independence.


title: Armenian genocide

text: On 24 April 1915, the Ottoman authorities arrested and deported hundreds of Armenian intellectuals and leaders from Constantinople. At the orders of Talaat Pasha, an estimated 800,000 to 1.2 million Armenians were sent on death marches to the Syrian Desert in 1915 and 1916. Driven forward by paramilitary escorts, the deportees were deprived of food and water and subjected to robbery, rape, and massacres. In the Syrian Desert, the survivors were dispersed into concentration camps. In 1916, another wave of massacres was ordered, leaving about 200,000 deportees alive by the end of the year. Around 100,000 to 200,000 Armenian women and children were forcibly converted to Islam and integrated into Muslim households. Massacres and ethnic cleansing of Armenian survivors were carried out by the Turkish nationalist movement during the Turkish War of Independence after World War I.


title: Armenian genocide

text: This genocide put an end to more than two thousand years of Armenian civilization. Together with the mass murder and expulsion of Syriac and Greek Orthodox Christians, it enabled the creation of an ethnonationalist Turkish state. The Turkish government maintains that the deportation of Armenians was a legitimate action that cannot be described as genocide. , 33 countries have recognized the events as genocide, which is also the academic consensus.


title: Armenian genocide

text: The presence of Armenians in Anatolia has been documented since the sixth century BCE, about 1,500 years before the arrival of Turkmens under the Seljuk dynasty. The Kingdom of Armenia adopted Christianity as its national religion in the fourth century CE, establishing the Armenian Apostolic Church. Following the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, two Islamic empires—the Ottoman Empire and the Iranian Safavid Empire—contested Western Armenia, which was permanently separated from Eastern Armenia (held by the Safavids) by the 1639 Treaty of Zuhab. The Ottoman Empire was multiethnic and multireligious, and its millet system offered non-Muslims a subordinate but protected place in society. Sharia law encoded Islamic superiority but guaranteed property rights and freedom of worship to non-Muslims ("dhimmis") in exchange for a special tax.


title: Armenian genocide

text: On the eve of World War I in 1914, around two million Armenians lived in Anatolia out of a total population of 15–17.5 million. According to the Armenian Patriarchate's estimates for 1913–1914, there were 2,925 Armenian towns and villages in the Ottoman Empire, of which 2,084 were in the Armenian highlands in the vilayets of Bitlis, Diyarbekir, Erzerum, Harput, and Van. Armenians were a minority in most places where they lived, alongside Turkish and Kurdish Muslim and Greek Orthodox Christian neighbors. According to the Patriarchate's figure, 215,131 Armenians lived in urban areas, especially Constantinople, Smyrna, and Eastern Thrace. Although most Ottoman Armenians were peasant farmers, they were overrepresented in commerce. As middleman minorities, despite the wealth of some Armenians, their overall political power was low, making them especially vulnerable.


title: Armenian genocide

text: Armenians in the eastern provinces lived in semi-feudal conditions and commonly encountered forced labor, illegal taxation, and unpunished crimes against them including robberies, murders, and sexual assaults. Beginning in 1839, the Ottoman government issued a series of reforms to centralize power and equalize the status of Ottoman subjects regardless of religion. The reforms to equalize the status of non-Muslims were strongly opposed by Islamic clergy and Muslims in general, and remained mostly theoretical. Because of the abolition of the Kurdish emirates in the mid-nineteenth century, the Ottoman government began to directly tax Armenian peasants who had previously paid taxes only to Kurdish landlords. The latter continued to exact levies illegally.


title: Armenian genocide

text: From the mid-nineteenth century, Armenians faced large-scale land usurpation as a consequence of the sedentarization of Kurdish tribes and the arrival of Muslim refugees and immigrants (mainly Circassians) following the Russo-Circassian War. In 1876, when Sultan Abdul Hamid II came to power, the state began to confiscate Armenian-owned land in the eastern provinces and give it to Muslim immigrants as part of a systematic policy to reduce the Armenian population of these areas. This policy lasted until World War I. These conditions led to a substantial decline in the population of the Armenian highlands; 300,000 Armenians left the empire, and others moved to towns. Some Armenians joined revolutionary political parties, of which the most influential was the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), founded in 1890. These parties primarily sought reform within the empire and found only limited support from Ottoman Armenians.


title: Armenian genocide

text: Russia's decisive victory in the 1877–1878 war forced the Ottoman Empire to cede parts of eastern Anatolia, the Balkans, and Cyprus. Under international pressure at the 1878 Congress of Berlin, the Ottoman government agreed to carry out reforms and guarantee the physical safety of its Armenian subjects, but there was no enforcement mechanism; conditions continued to worsen. The Congress of Berlin marked the emergence of the Armenian question in international diplomacy as Armenians were for the first time used by the Great Powers to interfere in Ottoman politics. Although Armenians had been called the "loyal millet" in contrast to Greeks and others who had previously challenged Ottoman rule, the authorities began to perceive Armenians as a threat after 1878. In 1891, Abdul Hamid created the "Hamidiye" regiments from Kurdish tribes, allowing them to act with impunity against Armenians. From 1895 to 1896 the empire saw widespread massacres; at least 100,000 Armenians were killed primarily by Ottoman soldiers and mobs let loose by the authorities. Many Armenian villages were forcibly converted to Islam. The Ottoman state bore ultimate responsibility for the killings, whose purpose was violently restoring the previous social order in which Christians would unquestioningly accept Muslim supremacy, and forcing Armenians to emigrate, thereby decreasing their numbers.


title: Armenian genocide

text: Abdul Hamid's despotism prompted the formation of an opposition movement, the Young Turks, which sought to overthrow him and restore the 1876 Constitution of the Ottoman Empire, which he had suspended in 1877. One faction of the Young Turks was the secret and revolutionary Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), based in Salonica, from which the charismatic conspirator Mehmed Talaat (later Talaat Pasha) emerged as a leading member. Although skeptical of a growing, exclusionary Turkish nationalism in the Young Turk movement, the ARF decided to ally with the CUP in December 1907. In 1908, the CUP came to power in the Young Turk Revolution, which began with a string of CUP assassinations of leading officials in Macedonia. Abdul Hamid was forced to reinstate the 1876 constitution and restore parliament, which was celebrated by Ottomans of all ethnicities and religions. Security improved in parts of the eastern provinces after 1908 and the CUP took steps to reform the local gendarmerie, although tensions remained high. Despite an agreement in the 1910 Salonika Accord between the ARF and the CUP to reverse the land usurpation of the previous decades, the CUP made no efforts to carry this out.


title: Armenian genocide

text: In early 1909 an unsuccessful countercoup was launched by conservatives and some liberals who opposed the CUP's increasingly repressive governance. When news of the countercoup reached Adana, armed Muslims attacked the Armenian quarter and Armenians returned fire. Ottoman soldiers did not protect Armenians and instead armed the rioters. Between 20,000 and 25,000 people, mostly Armenians, were killed in Adana and nearby towns. Unlike the 1890s massacres, the events were not organized by the central government but instigated by local officials, intellectuals, and Islamic clerics, including CUP supporters in Adana. Although the massacres went unpunished, the ARF continued to hope that reforms to improve security and restore lands were forthcoming, until late 1912, when they broke with the CUP and appealed to the European powers. On 8 February 1914, the CUP reluctantly agreed to reforms brokered by Germany that provided for the appointment of two European inspectors for the entire Ottoman east and putting the Hamidiye regiments in reserve. CUP leaders feared that these reforms, which were never implemented, could lead to partition and cited them as a reason for the elimination of the Armenian population in 1915.


title: Armenian genocide

text: The 1912 First Balkan War resulted in the loss of almost all of the empire's European territory and the mass expulsion of Muslims from the Balkans. Ottoman Muslim society was incensed by the atrocities committed against Balkan Muslims, intensifying anti-Christian sentiment and leading to a desire for revenge. Blame for the loss was assigned to all Christians, including the Ottoman Armenians, many of whom had fought on the Ottoman side. The Balkan Wars put an end to the Ottomanist movement for pluralism and coexistence; instead, the CUP turned to an increasingly radical Turkish nationalism to preserve the empire. CUP leaders such as Talaat and Enver Pasha came to blame non-Muslim population concentrations in strategic areas for many of the empire's problems, concluding by mid-1914 that they were internal tumors to be excised. Of these, Ottoman Armenians were considered the most dangerous, because CUP leaders feared that their homeland in Anatolia—claimed as the last refuge of the Turkish nation—would break away from the empire as the Balkans had.


title: Armenian genocide

text: In January 1913, the CUP launched another coup, installed a one-party state, and strictly repressed all real or perceived internal enemies. After the coup, the CUP shifted the demography of border areas by resettling Balkan Muslim refugees while coercing Christians to emigrate; immigrants were promised property that had belonged to Christians. When parts of Eastern Thrace were reoccupied by the Ottoman Empire during the Second Balkan War in mid-1913, there was a campaign of looting and intimidation against Greeks and Armenians, forcing many to emigrate. Around 150,000 Greek Orthodox from the Aegean coast were forcibly deported in May and June 1914 by Muslim bandits, who were secretly backed by the CUP and sometimes joined by the regular army. Historian Matthias Bjørnlund states that the perceived success of the Greek deportations allowed CUP leaders to envision even more radical policies "as yet another extension of a policy of social engineering through Turkification".


title: Armenian genocide

text: A few days after the outbreak of World War I, the CUP concluded an alliance with Germany on 2 August 1914. The same month, CUP representatives went to an ARF conference demanding that, in the event of war with Russia, the ARF incite Russian Armenians to intervene on the Ottoman side. Instead, the delegates resolved that Armenians should fight for the countries of their citizenships. During its war preparations, the Ottoman government recruited thousands of prisoners to join the paramilitary Special Organization, which initially focused on stirring up revolts among Muslims behind Russian lines beginning before the empire officially entered the war. On 29 October 1914, the empire entered World War I on the side of the Central Powers by launching a surprise attack on Russian ports in the Black Sea. Many Russian Armenians were enthusiastic about the war, but Ottoman Armenians were more ambivalent, afraid that supporting Russia would bring retaliation. Organization of Armenian volunteer units by Russian Armenians, later joined by some Ottoman Armenian deserters, further increased Ottoman suspicions against their Armenian population.


title: Armenian genocide

text: Wartime requisitions were often corrupt and arbitrary, and disproportionately targeted Greeks and Armenians. Armenian leaders urged young men to accept conscription into the army, but many soldiers of all ethnicities and religions deserted due to difficult conditions and concern for their families. At least 10 percent of Ottoman Armenians were mobilized, leaving their communities bereft of fighting-age men and therefore largely unable to organize armed resistance to deportation in 1915. During the Ottoman invasion of Russian and Persian territory, the Special Organization massacred local Armenians and Syriac Christians. Beginning in November 1914, provincial governors of Van, Bitlis, and Erzerum sent many telegrams to the central government pressing for more severe measures against the Armenians, both regionally and throughout the empire. These requests were endorsed by the central government already before 1915. Armenian civil servants were dismissed from their posts in late 1914 and early 1915. In February 1915, the CUP leaders decided to disarm Armenians serving in the army and transfer them to labor battalions. The Armenian soldiers in labor battalions were systematically executed, although many skilled workers were spared until 1916.


title: Armenian genocide

text: Minister of War Enver Pasha took over command of the Ottoman armies for the invasion of Russian territory, and tried to encircle the Russian Caucasus Army at the Battle of Sarikamish, fought from December 1914 to January 1915. Unprepared for the harsh winter conditions, his forces were routed, losing more than 60,000 men. The retreating Ottoman army destroyed dozens of Ottoman Armenian villages in Bitlis vilayet, massacring their inhabitants. Enver publicly blamed his defeat on Armenians who he claimed had actively sided with the Russians, a theory that became a consensus among CUP leaders. Reports of local incidents such as weapons caches, severed telegraph lines, and occasional killings confirmed preexisting beliefs about Armenian treachery and fueled paranoia among CUP leaders that a coordinated Armenian conspiracy was plotting against the empire. Discounting contrary reports that most Armenians were loyal, the CUP leaders decided that the Armenians had to be eliminated to save the empire.


title: Armenian genocide

text: Massacres of Armenian men were occurring in the vicinity of Bashkale in Van vilayet from December 1914. ARF leaders attempted to keep the situation calm, warning that even justifiable self-defense could lead to escalation of killing. The governor, Djevdet Bey, ordered the Armenians of Van to hand over their arms on 18 April 1915, creating a dilemma: If they obeyed, the Armenians expected to be killed, but if they refused, it would provide a pretext for massacres. Armenians fortified themselves in Van and repelled the Ottoman attack that began on 20 April. During the siege, Armenians in surrounding villages were massacred at Djevdet's orders. Russian forces captured Van on 18 May, finding 55,000 corpses in the province—about half its prewar Armenian population. Djevdet's forces proceeded to Bitlis and attacked Armenian and Syriac villages; the men were killed immediately, many women and children were kidnapped by local Kurds, and others marched away to be killed later. By the end of June, there were only a dozen Armenians in the vilayet.


title: Armenian genocide

text: The first deportations of Armenians were proposed by Djemal Pasha, the commander of the Fourth Army, in February 1915 and targeted Armenians in Cilicia (specifically Alexandretta, Dörtyol, Adana, Hadjin, Zeytun, and Sis) who were relocated to the area around Konya in central Anatolia. In late March or early April, the CUP Central Committee decided on the large-scale removal of Armenians from areas near the front lines. During the night of 23–24 April 1915 hundreds of Armenian political activists, intellectuals, and community leaders were rounded up in Constantinople and across the empire. This order from Talaat, intended to eliminate the Armenian leadership and anyone capable of organizing resistance, eventually resulted in the murder of most of those arrested. The same day, Talaat banned all Armenian political organizations and ordered that the Armenians who had previously been removed from Cilicia be deported again, from central Anatolia—where they would likely have survived—to the Syrian Desert.


title: Armenian genocide

text: During World War I, the CUP—whose central goal was to preserve the Ottoman Empire—came to identify Armenian civilians as an existential threat. CUP leaders held Armenians—including women and children—collectively guilty for "betraying" the empire, a belief that was crucial to deciding on genocide in early 1915. At the same time, the war provided an opportunity to enact, in Talaat's words, the "definitive solution to the Armenian Question". The CUP wrongly believed that the Russian Empire sought to annex eastern Anatolia, and ordered the genocide in large part to prevent this eventuality. The genocide was intended to permanently eliminate any possibility that Armenians could achieve autonomy or independence in the empire's eastern provinces. Ottoman records show the government aimed to reduce Armenians to no more than five percent of the local population in the sources of deportation and ten percent in the destination areas. This goal could not be accomplished without mass murder.


title: Armenian genocide

text: The deportation of Armenians and resettlement of Muslims in their lands was part of a broader project intended to permanently restructure the demographics of Anatolia. Armenian homes, businesses, and land were preferentially allocated to Muslims from outside the empire, nomads, and the estimated 800,000 (largely Kurdish) Ottoman subjects displaced because of the war with Russia. Resettled Muslims were spread out (typically limited to 10 percent in any area) among larger Turkish populations so that they would lose their distinctive characteristics, such as non-Turkish languages or nomadism. These migrants were exposed to harsh conditions and, in some cases, violence or restriction from leaving their new villages. The ethnic cleansing of Anatolia—the Armenian genocide, Assyrian genocide, and expulsion of Greeks after World War I—paved the way for the formation of an ethno-national Turkish state. In September 1918, Talaat emphasized that regardless of losing the war, he had succeeded at "transforming Turkey to a nation-state in Anatolia".


title: Armenian genocide

text: Deportation amounted to a death sentence; the authorities planned for and intended the death of the deportees. Deportation was only carried out behind the front lines, where no active rebellion existed, and was only possible in the absence of widespread resistance. Armenians who lived in the war zone were instead killed in massacres. Although ostensibly undertaken for military reasons, the deportation and murder of Armenians did not grant the empire any military advantage and actually undermined the Ottoman war effort. The empire faced a dilemma between its goal of eliminating Armenians and its practical need for their labor; those Armenians retained for their skills, in particular for manufacturing in war industries, were indispensable to the logistics of the Ottoman Army. By late 1915, the CUP had extinguished Armenian existence from eastern Anatolia.


title: Armenian genocide

text: On 23 May 1915, Talaat ordered the deportation of all Armenians in Van, Bitlis, and Erzerum. To grant a cover of legality to the deportation, already well underway in the eastern provinces and Cilicia, the Council of Ministers approved the Temporary Law of Deportation, which allowed authorities to deport anyone deemed "suspect". On 21 June, Talaat ordered the deportation of all Armenians throughout the empire, even Adrianople, from the Russian front. Following the elimination of the Armenian population in eastern Anatolia, in August 1915, the Armenians of western Anatolia and European Turkey were targeted for deportation. Some areas with a very low Armenian population and some cities, including Constantinople, were partially spared.


title: Armenian genocide

text: Overall, national, regional, and local levels of governance cooperated with the CUP in the perpetration of genocide. The Directorate for the Settlement of Tribes and Immigrants (IAMM) coordinated the deportation and the resettlement of Muslim immigrants in the vacant houses and lands. The IAMM, under the control of Talaat's Ministry of the Interior, and the Special Organization, which took orders directly from the CUP Central Committee, closely coordinated their activities. A dual-track system was used to communicate orders; those for the deportation of Armenians were communicated to the provincial governors through official channels, but orders of a criminal character, such as those calling for annihilation, were sent through party channels and destroyed upon receipt. Deportation convoys were mostly escorted by gendarmes or local militia. The killings near the front lines were carried out by the Special Organization, and those farther away also involved local militias, bandits, gendarmes, or Kurdish tribes depending on the area. Within the area controlled by the Third Army, which held eastern Anatolia, the army was only involved in genocidal atrocities in the vilayets of Van, Erzerum, and Bitlis.


title: Armenian genocide

text: Many perpetrators came from the Caucasus (Chechens and Circassians), who identified the Armenians with their Russian conquerors. Nomadic Kurds committed many atrocities during the genocide, but settled Kurds only rarely did so. Perpetrators had several motives, including ideology, revenge, desire for Armenian property, and careerism. To motivate perpetrators, state-appointed imams encouraged the killing of Armenians and killers were entitled to a third of Armenian movable property (another third went to local authorities and the last to the CUP). Embezzling beyond that was punished. Ottoman politicians and officials who opposed the genocide were dismissed or assassinated. The government decreed that any Muslim who harbored an Armenian against the will of the authorities would be executed.


title: Armenian genocide

text: Although the majority of able-bodied Armenian men had been conscripted into the army, others deserted, paid the exemption tax, or fell outside the age range of conscription. Unlike the earlier massacres of Ottoman Armenians, in 1915 Armenians were not usually killed in their villages, to avoid destruction of property or unauthorized looting. Instead, the men were usually separated from the rest of the deportees during the first few days and executed. Few resisted, believing it would put their families in greater danger. Boys above the age of twelve (sometimes fifteen) were treated as adult men. Execution sites were chosen for proximity to major roads and for rugged terrain, lakes, wells, or cisterns to facilitate the concealment or disposal of corpses. The convoys would stop at a nearby transit camp, where the escorts would demand a ransom from the Armenians. Those unable to pay were murdered. Units of the Special Organization, often wearing gendarme uniforms, were stationed at the killing sites; escorting gendarmes often did not participate in killing.


title: Armenian genocide

text: At least 150,000 Armenians passed through Erzindjan from June 1915, where a series of transit camps were set up to control the flow of victims to the killing site at the nearby Kemah gorge. Thousands of Armenians were killed near Lake Hazar, pushed by paramilitaries off the cliffs. More than 500,000 Armenians passed through the Firincilar plain south of Malatya, one of the deadliest areas during the genocide. Arriving convoys, having passed through the plain to approach the Kahta highlands, would have found gorges already filled with corpses from previous convoys. Many others were held in tributary valleys of the Tigris, Euphrates, or Murat and systematically executed by the Special Organization. Armenian men were often drowned by being tied together back-to-back before being thrown in the water, a method that was not used on women.


title: Armenian genocide

text: Authorities viewed disposal of bodies through rivers as a cheap and efficient method, but it caused widespread pollution downstream. So many bodies floated down the Tigris and Euphrates that they sometimes blocked the rivers and needed to be cleared with explosives. Other rotting corpses became stuck to the riverbanks, and still others traveled as far as the Persian Gulf. The rivers remained polluted long after the massacres, causing epidemics downstream. Tens of thousands of Armenians died along the roads and their bodies were buried hastily or, more often, simply left beside the roads. The Ottoman government ordered the corpses to be cleared as soon as possible to prevent both photographic documentation and disease epidemics, but these orders were not uniformly followed.


title: Armenian genocide

text: Women and children, who made up the great majority of deportees, were usually not executed immediately, but subjected to hard marches through mountainous terrain without food and water. Those who could not keep up were left to die or shot. During 1915, some were forced to walk as far as in the summer heat. Some deportees from western Anatolia were allowed to travel by rail. There was a distinction between the convoys from eastern Anatolia, which were eliminated almost in their entirety, and those from farther west, which made up most of those surviving to reach Syria. For example, around 99 percent of Armenians deported from Erzerum did not reach their destination.


title: Armenian genocide

text: The Islamization of Armenians, carried out as a systematic state policy involving the bureaucracy, police, judiciary, and clergy, was a major structural component of the genocide. An estimated 100,000 to 200,000 Armenians were Islamized, and it is estimated that as many as two million Turkish citizens in the early 21st century may have at least one Armenian grandparent. Some Armenians were allowed to convert to Islam and evade deportation, but the regime insisted on their destruction wherever their numbers exceeded the five to ten percent threshold, or there was a risk of them being able to preserve their nationality and culture. Talaat Pasha personally authorized conversion of Armenians and carefully tracked the loyalty of converted Armenians until the end of the war. Although the first and most important step was conversion to Islam, the process also required the eradication of Armenian names, language, and culture, and for women, immediate marriage to a Muslim. Although Islamization was the most feasible opportunity for survival, it also transgressed Armenian moral and social norms.


title: Armenian genocide

text: The CUP allowed Armenian women to marry into Muslim households, as these women had to convert to Islam and would lose their Armenian identity. Young women and girls were often appropriated as house servants or sex slaves. Some boys were abducted to work as forced laborers for Muslim individuals. Some children were forcibly seized, while others were sold or given up by their parents to save their lives. Special state-run orphanages were also set up with strict procedures intending to deprive their charges of an Armenian identity. Most Armenian children who survived the genocide endured exploitation, hard labor without pay, forced conversion to Islam, and physical and sexual abuse. Armenian women captured during the journey ended up in Turkish or Kurdish households; those who were Islamized during the second phase of the genocide found themselves in an Arab or Bedouin environment.


title: Armenian genocide

text: The rape, sexual abuse, and prostitution of Armenian women were all very common. Although Armenian women tried to avoid sexual violence, suicide was often the only alternative. Deportees were displayed naked in Damascus and sold as sex slaves in some areas, constituting an important source of income for accompanying gendarmes. Some were sold in Arabian slave markets to Muslim Hajj pilgrims and ended up as far away as Tunisia or Algeria.


title: Armenian genocide

text: A secondary motivation for genocide was the destruction of the Armenian bourgeoisie to make room for a Turkish and Muslim middle class and build a statist "national economy" controlled by Muslim Turks. The campaign to Turkify the economy began in June 1914 with a law that obliged many ethnic minority merchants to hire Muslims. Following the deportations, the businesses of the victims were taken over by Muslims who were often incompetent, leading to economic difficulties. The genocide had catastrophic effects on the Ottoman economy; Muslims were disadvantaged by the deportation of skilled professionals and entire districts fell into famine following their farmers' deportation. The Ottoman and Turkish governments passed a series of Abandoned Properties Laws to manage and redistribute property confiscated from Armenians. Although the laws maintained that the state was simply administering the properties on behalf of the absent Armenians, there was no provision to return them to the owners—it was presumed that they had ceased to exist.


title: Armenian genocide

text: Historians Taner Akçam and Ümit Kurt argue that "The Republic of Turkey and its legal system were built, in a sense, on the seizure of Armenian cultural, social, and economic wealth, and on the removal of the Armenian presence." The proceeds from the sale of confiscated property was often used to fund the deportation of Armenians and resettlement of Muslims, as well as for army, militia, and other government spending. Ultimately this formed much of the basis of the industry and economy of the post-1923 republic, endowing it with capital. The dispossession and exile of Armenian competitors enabled many lower-class Turks (i.e. peasantry, soldiers, and laborers) to rise to the middle class. Confiscation of Armenian assets continued into the second half of the twentieth century, and in 2006 the National Security Council ruled that property records from 1915 must be kept closed to protect national security. Outside of Istanbul, the traces of Armenian existence in Turkey, including churches and monasteries, libraries, "khachkars", and animal and place names, have been systematically erased, beginning during the war and continuing for decades afterward.


title: Armenian genocide

text: The first arrivals in mid-1915 were accommodated in Aleppo. From mid-November, the convoys were denied access to the city and redirected along the Baghdad Railway or the Euphrates towards Mosul. The first transit camp was established at Sibil, east of Aleppo; one convoy would arrive each day while another would depart for Meskene or Deir ez-Zor. Dozens of concentration camps were set up in Syria and Upper Mesopotamia. By October 1915, some 870,000 deportees had reached Syria and Upper Mesopotamia. Most were repeatedly transferred between camps, being held in each camp for a few weeks, until there were very few survivors. This strategy physically weakened the Armenians and spread disease, so much that some camps were shut down in late 1915 due to the threat of disease spreading to the Ottoman military. In late 1915, the camps around Aleppo were liquidated and the survivors were forced to march to Ras al-Ayn; the camps around Ras al-Ayn were closed in early 1916 and the survivors sent to Deir ez-Zor.


title: Armenian genocide

text: In general, Armenians were denied food and water during and after their forced march to the Syrian desert; many died of starvation, exhaustion, or disease, especially dysentery, typhus, and pneumonia. Some local officials gave Armenians food; others took bribes to provide food and water. Aid organizations were officially barred from providing food to the deportees, although some circumvented these prohibitions. Survivors testified that some Armenians refused aid as they believed it would only prolong their suffering. The guards raped female prisoners and also allowed Bedouins to raid the camps at night for looting and rape; some women were forced into marriage. Thousands of Armenian children were sold to childless Turks, Arabs, and Jews, who would come to the camps to buy them from their parents. In the western Levant, governed by the Ottoman Fourth Army under Djemal Pasha, there were no concentration camps or large-scale massacres, rather Armenians were resettled and recruited to work for the war effort. They had to convert to Islam or face deportation to another area.


title: Armenian genocide

text: Armenian ability to adapt and survive was greater than the perpetrators expected. A loosely organized, Armenian-led resistance network based in Aleppo succeeded in helping many deportees, saving Armenian lives. At the beginning of 1916 some 500,000 deportees were alive in Syria and Mesopotamia. Afraid that surviving Armenians might return home after the war, Talaat Pasha ordered a second wave of massacres in February 1916. Another wave of deportations targeted Armenians remaining in Anatolia. More than 200,000 Armenians were killed between March and October 1916, often in remote areas near Deir ez-Zor and on parts of the Khabur valley, where their bodies would not create a public health hazard. The massacres killed most of the Armenians who had survived the camp system.


title: Armenian genocide

text: The Ottoman Empire tried to prevent journalists and photographers from documenting the atrocities, threatening them with arrest. Nevertheless, substantiated reports of mass killings were widely covered in Western newspapers. On 24 May 1915, the Triple Entente (Russia, Britain, and France) formally condemned the Ottoman Empire for "crimes against humanity and civilization", and threatened to hold the perpetrators accountable. Witness testimony was published in books such as "The Treatment of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire" (1916) and "Ambassador Morgenthau's Story" (1918), which raised public awareness about the genocide.


title: Armenian genocide

text: The German Empire was a military ally of the Ottoman Empire during World War I. German diplomats approved limited removals of Armenians in early 1915, and took no action against the genocide, which has been a source of controversy.


title: Armenian genocide

text: Relief efforts were organized in dozens of countries to raise money for Armenian survivors. By 1925, people in 49 countries were organizing "Golden Rule Sundays" during which they consumed the diet of Armenian refugees, to raise money for humanitarian efforts. Between 1915 and 1930, Near East Relief raised $110 million ($ billion adjusted for inflation) for refugees from the Ottoman Empire.


title: Armenian genocide

text: Intentional, state-sponsored killing of Armenians mostly ceased by the end of January 1917, although sporadic massacres and starvation continued. Both contemporaries and later historians have estimated that around 1 million Armenians died during the genocide, with figures ranging from 600,000 to 1.5 million deaths. Between 800,000 and 1.2 million Armenians were deported, and contemporaries estimated that by late 1916 only 200,000 were still alive. As the British Army advanced in 1917 and 1918 northwards through the Levant, they liberated around 100,000 to 150,000 Armenians working for the Ottoman military under abysmal conditions, not including those held by Arab tribes.


title: Armenian genocide

text: As a result of the Bolshevik Revolution and a subsequent separate peace with the Central Powers, the Russian army withdrew and Ottoman forces advanced into eastern Anatolia. The First Republic of Armenia was proclaimed in May 1918, at which time 50 percent of its population were refugees and 60 percent of its territory was under Ottoman occupation. Ottoman troops withdrew from parts of Armenia following the October 1918 Armistice of Mudros. From 1918 to 1920, Armenian militants committed revenge killings of thousands of Muslims, which have been cited as a retroactive excuse for genocide. In 1918, at least 200,000 people in Armenia, mostly refugees, died from starvation or disease, in part due to a Turkish blockade of food supplies and the deliberate destruction of crops in eastern Armenia by Turkish troops, both before and after the armistice.


title: Armenian genocide

text: Armenians organized a coordinated effort known as "vorpahavak" () that reclaimed thousands of kidnapped and islamized Armenian women and children. Armenian leaders abandoned traditional patrilineality to classify children born to Armenian women and their Muslim captors as Armenian. An orphanage in Alexandropol held 25,000 orphans, the largest number in the world. In 1920, the Armenian Patriarchate of Constantinople reported it was caring for 100,000 orphans, estimating that another 100,000 remained captive.


title: Armenian genocide

text: Following the armistice, Allied governments championed the prosecution of war criminals. Grand Vizier Damat Ferid Pasha publicly recognized that 800,000 Ottoman citizens of Armenian origin had died as a result of state policy and stated that "humanity, civilizations are shuddering, and forever will shudder, in face of this tragedy". The postwar Ottoman government held the Ottoman Special Military Tribunal, by which it sought to pin the Armenian genocide onto the CUP leadership while exonerating the Ottoman Empire as a whole, therefore avoiding partition by the Allies. The court ruled that "the crime of mass murder" of Armenians was "organized and carried out by the top leaders of CUP". Eighteen perpetrators (including Talaat, Enver, and Djemal) were sentenced to death, of whom only three were ultimately executed as the remainder had fled and were tried "in absentia". The 1920 Treaty of Sèvres, which awarded Armenia a large area in eastern Anatolia, eliminated the Ottoman government's purpose for holding the trials. Prosecution was hampered by a widespread belief among Turkish Muslims that the actions against the Armenians were not punishable crimes. Increasingly, the crimes were considered necessary and justified to establish a Turkish nation-state.


title: Armenian genocide

text: On 15 March 1921, Talaat was assassinated in Berlin as part of Operation Nemesis, the 1920s covert operation of the ARF to kill the perpetrators of the Armenian genocide. The trial of his admitted killer, Soghomon Tehlirian, focused on Talaat's responsibility for genocide. Tehlirian was acquitted by a German jury.


title: Armenian genocide

text: The CUP regrouped as the Turkish nationalist movement to fight the Turkish War of Independence, relying on the support of perpetrators of the genocide and those who had profited from it. This movement saw the return of Armenian survivors as a mortal threat to its nationalist ambitions and the interests of its supporters. The return of survivors was therefore impossible in most of Anatolia and thousands of Armenians who tried were murdered. Historian Raymond Kévorkian states that the war of independence was "intended to complete the genocide by finally eradicating Armenian, Greek, and Syriac survivors". In 1920, Turkish general Kâzım Karabekir invaded Armenia with orders "to eliminate Armenia physically and politically". Nearly 100,000 Armenians were massacred in Transcaucasia by the Turkish army and another 100,000 fled from Cilicia during the French withdrawal. According to Kévorkian, only the Soviet occupation of Armenia prevented another genocide.


title: Armenian genocide

text: The victorious nationalists subsequently declared the Republic of Turkey in 1923. CUP war criminals were granted immunity and later that year, the Treaty of Lausanne established Turkey's current borders and provided for the Greek population's expulsion. Its minority protection provisions had no enforcement mechanism and were disregarded in practice.


title: Armenian genocide

text: Armenian survivors were left mainly in three locations. About 295,000 Armenians had fled to Russian-controlled territory during the genocide and ended up mostly in Soviet Armenia. An estimated 200,000 Armenian refugees settled in the Middle East, forming a new wave of the Armenian diaspora. In the Republic of Turkey, about 100,000 Armenians lived in Constantinople and another 200,000 lived in the provinces, largely women and children who had been forcibly converted. Though Armenians in Constantinople faced discrimination, they were allowed to maintain their cultural identity, unlike those elsewhere in Turkey who continued to face forced Islamization and kidnapping of girls after 1923. Between 1922 and 1929, the Turkish authorities eliminated surviving Armenians from southern Turkey, expelling thousands to French-mandate Syria.


title: Armenian genocide

text: According to historian Margaret Lavinia Anderson, the Armenian genocide reached an "iconic status" as "the apex of horrors conceivable" before World War II. It was described by contemporaries as "the murder of a nation", "race extermination", "the greatest crime of the ages", and "the blackest page in modern history". According to historian Stefan Ihrig, in Germany, the Nazis viewed post-1923 Turkey as a post-genocidal paradise and, "incorporated the Armenian genocide, its 'lessons', tactics, and 'benefits', into their own worldview".


title: Armenian genocide

text: In the 1920s, Kurds and Alevis replaced Armenians as the perceived internal enemy of the Turkish state. Militarism, weak rule of law, lack of minority rights, and especially the belief that Turkey is constantly under threat—thus justifying state violence—are among the main legacies of 1915 in Turkey. In postwar Turkey, the perpetrators of the genocide were hailed as "martyrs" of the national cause. Turkey's official denial of the Armenian genocide continues to rely on the CUP's justification of its actions. The Turkish government maintains that the mass deportation of Armenians was a legitimate action to combat an existential threat to the empire, but that there was no intention to exterminate the Armenian people. The government's position is supported by the majority of Turkish citizens. Many Kurds, who themselves have suffered political repression in Turkey, have recognized and condemned the genocide.


title: Armenian genocide

text: The Turkish state perceives open discussion of the genocide as a threat to national security because of its connection with the foundation of the republic, and for decades strictly censored it. In 2002, the AK Party came to power and relaxed censorship to a certain extent, and the profile of the issue was raised by the 2007 assassination of Hrant Dink, a Turkish-Armenian journalist known for his advocacy of reconciliation. Although the AK Party softened the state denial rhetoric, describing Armenians as part of the Ottoman Empire's war losses, during the 2010s political repression and censorship increased again. Turkey's century-long effort to prevent any recognition or mention of the genocide in foreign countries has included millions of dollars in lobbying, as well as intimidation and threats.


title: Armenian genocide

text: Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day is commemorated on 24 April each year in Armenia and abroad, the anniversary of the deportation of Armenian intellectuals. On 24 April 1965, 100,000 Armenians protested in Yerevan, and diaspora Armenians demonstrated across the world in favor of recognition of the genocide and annexing land from Turkey. A memorial was completed two years later, at Tsitsernakaberd above Yerevan.


title: Armenian genocide

text: Since 1988, Armenians and Turkic Azeris have been involved in a conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave internationally recognized as part of Azerbaijan. Initially involving peaceful demonstrations by Armenians, the conflict turned violent and has featured massacres by both sides, resulting in the displacement of more than half a million people. During the conflict, the Azerbaijani and Armenian governments have regularly accused each other of plotting genocide. Azerbaijan has also joined the Turkish effort to deny the Armenian genocide.


title: Armenian genocide

text: In response to continuing denial by the Turkish state, many Armenian diaspora activists have lobbied for formal recognition of the Armenian genocide, an effort that has become a central concern of the Armenian diaspora. From the 1970s onwards, many countries avoided recognition to preserve good relations with Turkey. , 31 countries have recognized the genocide, along with Pope Francis and the European Parliament.


title: Armenian genocide

text: After meeting Armenian survivors in the Middle East, Austrian–Jewish writer Franz Werfel wrote "The Forty Days of Musa Dagh" (1933), a fictionalized retelling of the successful Armenian uprising in Musa Dagh, as a warning of the dangers of Nazism. According to Ihrig, the book is among the most important works of twentieth-century literature to address genocide and "is still considered essential reading for Armenians worldwide". The genocide became a central theme in English-language Armenian-American literature. The first film about the Armenian genocide, "Ravished Armenia," was released in 1919 as a fundraiser for Near East Relief, based on the survival story of Aurora Mardiganian, who played herself. Since then more films about the genocide have been made, although it took several decades for any of them to reach a mass-market audience. The abstract expressionist paintings of Arshile Gorky were influenced by his experience of the genocide. More than 200 memorials have been erected in 32 countries to commemorate the event.


title: Armenian genocide

text: The genocide is extensively documented in the archives of Germany, Austria, the United States, Russia, France, and the United Kingdom, as well as the Ottoman archives, despite systematic purges of incriminating documents by Turkey. There are also thousands of eyewitness accounts from Western missionaries and Armenian survivors. Polish-Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term "genocide" in 1944, became interested in war crimes after reading about the 1921 trial of Soghomon Tehlirian for the assassination of Talaat Pasha. Lemkin recognized the fate of the Armenians as one of the most significant genocides in the twentieth century. Almost all historians and scholars outside of Turkey, and an increasing number of Turkish scholars, recognize the destruction of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire as genocide.


title: Robert Plant

text: Robert Anthony Plant (born 20 August 1948) is an English singer and songwriter, best known as the lead singer and lyricist of the English rock band Led Zeppelin for all of its existence from 1968 until 1980, when the band broke up following the death of John Bonham, the band's drummer. Plant was inducted with the band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995.


title: Robert Plant

text: Plant enjoyed great success with Led Zeppelin from the late 1960s to the end of the 1970s. He developed a compelling image as the charismatic rock-and-roll front man, similar to those of contemporaries such as Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, Roger Daltrey of the Who, Jim Morrison of the Doors, and Freddie Mercury of Queen. After Led Zeppelin dissolved in 1980, Plant continued to perform and record continuously on a variety of solo and group projects. His first well known post-Led Zeppelin project was The Honeydrippers, alongside former Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page, among others. In 1988, he released the solo album "Now and Zen", which spawned the hit singles "Tall Cool One" and "Ship of Fools". In the 1990s, another reunion project named Page and Plant released two studio albums and a live album from an "MTV Unplugged" performance, as well as winning the Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance in 1998 for "Most High". In 2007, he began a collaboration with bluegrass artist Alison Krauss, releasing the album "Raising Sand", which won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 2009 and produced the hit song "Please Read the Letter", which won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year the same year. In 2010, he revived the Band of Joy (which shared its name with an early band he performed with in the 1960s), and in 2012 formed a new band, the Sensational Space Shifters, followed by a reunion with Alison Krauss in 2019.


title: Robert Plant

text: In 2008, "Rolling Stone" editors ranked him number 15 on their list of the 100 best singers of all time. In 2011, "Rolling Stone" readers ranked Plant the greatest of all lead singers. In 2006, "Hit Parader" magazine named Plant the "Greatest Metal Vocalist of All Time". In 2009, Plant was voted "the greatest voice in rock" in a poll conducted by UK classic rock radio station Planet Rock.


title: Robert Plant

text: Robert Anthony Plant was born on 20 August 1948, in the Black Country town of West Bromwich, Staffordshire, England, to Robert C. Plant, a qualified civil engineer who worked in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War, and Annie Celia Plant (née Cain), a Romani woman. He grew up in the Hayley Green area of Halesowen, Worcestershire. Plant gained an interest in singing and rock and roll music at an early age; in an interview with Andrew Denton on the Denton talk show in 1994, Plant stated his desire, as a ten-year-old, to be like Elvis Presley:When I was a kid I used to hide behind the curtains at home at Christmas and I used to try and be Elvis. There was a certain ambience between the curtains and the French windows, there was a certain sound there for a ten-year-old. That was all the ambience I got at ten years old ... And I always wanted to be ... a bit similar to thatHe left King Edward VI Grammar School for Boys in Stourbridge in his mid-teens and developed a strong passion for the blues, mainly through his admiration for Willie Dixon, Robert Johnson and early renditions of songs in this genre.


title: Robert Plant

text: He abandoned training as a chartered accountant after only two weeks to attend college in an effort to gain more GCE passes and to become part of the English Midlands blues scene. "I left home at 16", he said, "and I started my real education musically, moving from group to group, furthering my knowledge of the blues and of other music which had weight and was worth listening to".


title: Robert Plant

text: Plant's early blues influences included Johnson, Bukka White, Skip James, Jerry Miller, and Sleepy John Estes. Plant had various jobs while pursuing his music career, one of which was working for the major British construction company Wimpey in Birmingham in 1967 laying tarmac on roads. He also worked at Woolworth's in Halesowen town for a short period of time. He cut three obscure singles on CBS Records and sang with a variety of bands, including the Crawling King Snakes, which brought him into contact with drummer John Bonham. They both went on to play in the Band of Joy, merging blues with newer psychedelic trends.


title: Robert Plant

text: In 1968, guitarist Jimmy Page was in search of a lead singer for his new band and met Plant after being turned down by his first choice, Terry Reid, who referred him to a show at a teacher training college in Birmingham (where Plant was singing in a band named Hobbstweedle). In front of Page, Plant sang Jefferson Airplane's "Somebody to Love", leading Page to end his search. As recalled by Plant and Page:


title: Robert Plant

text: With a shared passion for music, Plant and Page immediately developed a strong relationship, and began their writing collaboration with reworkings of earlier blues songs.


title: Robert Plant

text: Initially dubbed the "New Yardbirds" in 1968, the band soon came to be known as Led Zeppelin. The band's eponymous debut album hit the charts in 1969 and is widely credited as a catalyst for the heavy metal genre. Plant has commented that it is unfair for people to think of Zeppelin as heavy metal, as almost a third of their music was acoustic.


title: Robert Plant

text: In 1975, Plant and his wife Maureen (now divorced) were seriously injured in a car crash in Rhodes, Greece. This significantly affected the production of Led Zeppelin's seventh album "Presence" for a few months while he recovered, and forced the band to cancel the remaining tour dates for the year.


title: Robert Plant

text: In July 1977, his son Karac died at the age of five while Plant was engaged on Led Zeppelin's concert tour of the United States. Plant retreated to his home in the Midlands of England and, for months afterward, questioned his future.


title: Robert Plant

text: Plant did not begin writing song lyrics with Led Zeppelin until the making of "Led Zeppelin II", in 1969. According to Jimmy Page:


title: Robert Plant

text: Plant's lyrics with Led Zeppelin were often mystical, philosophical and spiritual, alluding to events in classical and Norse mythology, such as "Immigrant Song", which refers to Valhalla and Viking conquests. However, the song "No Quarter" is often misunderstood to refer to the god Thor; the song actually refers to Mount Thor (which is named after the god). Another example is "The Rain Song".


title: Robert Plant

text: Plant was also influenced by J. R. R. Tolkien, whose book series inspired lyrics in some early Led Zeppelin songs. Most notably, "The Battle of Evermore", "Misty Mountain Hop", "No Quarter", "Ramble On" and "Over the Hills and Far Away" contain verses referencing Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" and "The Hobbit". Conversely, Plant sometimes used more straightforward blues-based lyrics dealing primarily with sexual innuendo, as in "The Lemon Song", "Trampled Under Foot", and "Black Dog".


title: Robert Plant

text: Welsh mythology also forms a basis of Plant's interest in mystical lyrics. He grew up close to the Welsh border and would often take summer trips to Snowdonia. Plant bought a Welsh sheep farm in 1973, and began taking Welsh lessons and looking into the mythology of the land (such as Black Book of Carmarthen, Book of Taliesin, etc.) Plant's first son, Karac, was named after the Welsh warrior Caratacus. The song "Bron-Y-Aur Stomp" is named after the 18th-century Welsh cottage Bron-Yr-Aur, owned by a friend of his father; it later inspired the song "Bron-Yr-Aur". The songs "Misty Mountain Hop", "That's the Way", and early dabblings in what would become "Stairway to Heaven" were written in Wales and lyrically reflect Plant's mystical view of the land. Critic Steve Turner suggests that Plant's early and continued experiences in Wales served as the foundation for his broader interest in the mythologies he revisits in his lyrics (including those myth systems of Tolkien and the Norse).


title: Robert Plant

text: Page's passion for diverse musical experiences influenced Plant to explore Africa, specifically Marrakesh in Morocco where he encountered Umm Kulthum:


title: Robert Plant

text: Both he and Jimmy Page revisited these influences during their reunion album "" in 1994. During his solo career Plant tapped into these influences many times, most notably on the 2002 album "Dreamland".


title: Robert Plant

text: Arguably one of Plant's most significant achievements with Led Zeppelin was his contribution to the track "Stairway to Heaven", an epic rock ballad featured on "Led Zeppelin IV" that drew influence from folk, blues, Celtic traditional music and hard rock among other genres. Most of the lyrics of the song were written spontaneously by Plant in 1970 at Headley Grange. While never released as a single, the song has topped polls as the greatest song of all time.


title: Robert Plant

text: Plant is also recognised for his lyrical improvisation in Led Zeppelin's live performances, often singing verses previously unheard on studio recordings. One of the most famous Led Zeppelin musical devices involves Plant's vocal mimicking of bandmate Jimmy Page's guitar effects. This can be heard in the songs "How Many More Times", "Dazed and Confused", "The Lemon Song", "You Shook Me", "Nobody's Fault but Mine" and "Sick Again".


title: Robert Plant

text: He is also known for his light-hearted, humorous and unusual on-stage banter. Plant often discusses the origin and background of the songs during his shows, and sometimes provides social comment as well. He frequently talks about American blues musicians as his inspiration, mentioning artists like Robert Johnson, Howlin' Wolf, Blind Willie Johnson and Willie Dixon at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony and the 2007 Ahmet Ertegün Tribute Concert with Led Zeppelin.


title: Robert Plant

text: Plant enjoyed great success with Led Zeppelin throughout the 1970s and developed a compelling image as the charismatic rock-and-roll front man, similar to his contemporaries the Who's singer Roger Daltrey, Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, Freddie Mercury of Queen, and Jim Morrison of the Doors. With his mane of long blond hair and powerful, bare-chested appearance, Plant helped to create the "god of rock and roll" or "rock god" archetype. On stage, Plant was particularly active in live performances, often dancing, jumping, skipping, snapping his fingers, clapping, making emphatic gestures to emphasise a lyric or cymbal crash, throwing back his head, or placing his hands on his hips. As the 1970s progressed he, along with the other members of Led Zeppelin, became increasingly flamboyant on-stage, and wore more elaborate, colourful clothing and jewellery.


title: Robert Plant

text: According to "Classic Rock" magazine, "once he had a couple of US tours under his belt, 'Percy' Plant swiftly developed a staggering degree of bravado and swagger that irrefutably enhanced Led Zeppelin's rapidly burgeoning appeal." In 1994, during his "Unledded" tour with Jimmy Page, Plant himself reflected tongue-in-cheek upon his Led Zeppelin showmanship:


title: Robert Plant

text: One of the oddest awards he received was the "Rock Scene" magazine "Chest O Rama". Readers of the magazine had to decide who had the best chest in rock, and Plant was the winner. When they contacted him about it, he replied: "I'm really greatly honoured although it's hard for me to be eloquent on the subject of my chest."


title: Robert Plant

text: After Led Zeppelin disbanded in December 1980 (following the death of drummer John Bonham), Plant briefly considered abandoning music to pursue a career as a teacher in the Rudolf Steiner education system, going so far as to be accepted for teacher training. He nevertheless embarked on a successful solo career, helped by encouragement from Genesis drummer Phil Collins, who would go on to play with him. Plant's solo career began with the album "Pictures at Eleven" in 1982, followed by 1983's "The Principle of Moments". Popular tracks from this period include "Big Log" (a Top 20 hit in 1983), "In the Mood" (1983), "Little by Little" (from 1985's "Shaken 'n' Stirred"), "Far Post" (the B-side of "Burning Down One Side"), which appeared on the soundtrack of the 1985 movie "White Nights" starring Gregory Hines and Mikhail Baryshnikov, and popularised by airplay on album-oriented rock stations), "Tall Cool One" (a No. 25 hit from 1988's "Now and Zen") and later "I Believe" (from 1993's "Fate of Nations"). This last track, like Led Zeppelin's "All My Love", was written for and dedicated to his late son, Karac. Whilst Plant avoided performing Led Zeppelin songs through much of this period (although he would occasionally improvise his unique Zeppelin screams into his set), his tours in 1983 (with Phil Collins on drums) and in 1985 were very successful, often performing to sold-out arena-sized venues. In 1986 Plant performed at the Birmingham Heart Beat Charity Concert with other famous Midlands musicians.


title: Robert Plant

text: During the late 1980s and early 1990s Plant co-wrote three solo albums with keyboardist/songwriter Phil Johnstone. These were: "Now and Zen" in 1988, "Manic Nirvana" in 1990, and the 1993 "Fate of Nations" (which features Moya Brennan of Clannad and former Cutting Crew guitarist Kevin Scott MacMichael). Songs from this third album, plus a smattering of Led Zeppelin classics, made up the set-list for Plant's acclaimed sunset performance on the Main Stage at Glastonbury Festival, in 1993. It was Johnstone who talked Plant into playing Led Zeppelin songs in his live shows, something Plant had always previously resisted, not wanting to be forever known as "the former Led Zeppelin vocalist".


title: Robert Plant

text: Although Led Zeppelin split in 1980, Plant occasionally collaborated with Jimmy Page on various projects through this period, including forming a short-lived all-star group with Page and Jeff Beck in 1984, called the Honeydrippers. They released an EP called "", and the band had a No. 3 hit with a remake of the Phil Phillips' tune "Sea of Love", plus a follow-up hit with a cover of Roy Brown's "Rockin' at Midnight". The pair again worked together in the studio on the 1988 Page solo effort "Outrider", and in the same year Page contributed to Plant's album "Now and Zen". Also, on 15 May 1988 Plant appeared with Page as a member of Led Zeppelin, at the Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary concert (where he also performed in his own right as a solo artist). Plant's live collaborations with other well-known musicians continued when he took to the stage with Queen at Wembley Stadium, for 1992's "The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert" for AIDS Awareness; where he sang Queen's "Innuendo" and "Crazy Little Thing Called Love", and Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" and "Thank You".


title: Robert Plant

text: Page and Plant became a full-fledged performing act from 1994 through 1998, releasing the "" album in 1994 and following with an enormously successful tour in 1995, including a return to the Glastonbury limelight. Fourteen years of speculation from their fans and occasional sniping between the two former members ended when they reconvened their former musical partnership to produce "No Quarter". Having long resisted offers from MTV to reform to do an "Unplugged" show, they finally accepted as part of a deal that also allowed them to visit Morocco to record new material. The album combines the results of both of these projects. The Led Zeppelin material features new arrangements and new instrumentation, including strings, Egyptian musicians and the vocals of British-Asian star Najma Akhtar.


title: Robert Plant

text: Page and Plant recorded their only post-Zeppelin album of original material on the 1998 album "Walking into Clarksdale", an effort that was unsuccessful commercially, leading Plant to return to his solo career after another world tour. A song from this album, "Please Read the Letter", was re-recorded by Plant with Alison Krauss, and was featured on their 2007 album which won the Grammy Award for Record of the Year.


title: Robert Plant

text: Starting in mid-1999, Plant performed until the end of 2000 at several small venues with his folk-rock band, named Priory of Brion. This band consisted of the original Band of Joy guitarist Kevyn Gammond alongside Andy Edwards (drums), Paul Timothy (keyboards), and Paul Wetton (bass). The Priory of Brion played around one hundred concerts across Europe at various small clubs and festivals. The band performed cover versions of songs that had influenced Plant in his formative years. Many of these cover versions would crop up later on his "Dreamland" album.


title: Robert Plant

text: In 1999, Plant contributed to the tribute album for Moby Grape co-founder Skip Spence, who was terminally ill. The album, "" (Birdman, 1999), with the album title referring to Spence's only solo album, "Oar" (Columbia, 1969), contained Plant's version of Spence's "Little Hands". Plant had been an admirer of Spence and Moby Grape since the release of Moby Grape's eponymous 1967 debut album.


title: Robert Plant

text: In 2001, Plant appeared on Afro Celt Sound System's album "". The song "Life Begin Again" features a duet with Welsh folksinger Julie Murphy, emphasising Plant's recurring interest in Welsh culture (Murphy would also tour in support of Plant).


title: Robert Plant

text: In the summer of 2001, Plant reunited with Page for both a cover of "My Bucket's Got a Hole in It" for a Sun Records tribute album and an appearance at the Montreux Jazz Festival, the last time they worked outside of Led Zeppelin together.


title: Robert Plant

text: In 2002, with his then newly formed band Strange Sensation, Plant released a widely acclaimed collection of mostly blues and folk remakes, "Dreamland". Contrasting with this lush collection of often relatively obscure remakes, the second album with Strange Sensation, "Mighty ReArranger" (2005), contains new, original songs. Both have received some of the most favourable reviews of Plant's solo career and four Grammy nominations, two in 2003 and two in 2006.


title: Robert Plant

text: As a former member of Led Zeppelin, along with Page and John Paul Jones, Plant received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005 and the Polar Music Prize in 2006.


title: Robert Plant

text: From 2001 to 2007, Plant actively toured the US and Europe with Strange Sensation. His sets typically included recent, but not only, solo material and plenty of Led Zeppelin favourites, often with new and expanded arrangements. A DVD titled "Soundstage: Robert Plant and Strange Sensation", featuring his "Soundstage" performance (filmed at the Soundstage studios in Chicago on 16 September 2005), was released in October 2006.


title: Robert Plant

text: With Strange Sensation's Justin Adams he appeared at the 2003 "Festival au Desert" held in Essakane in the North of Mali, captured in a French-language documentary film entitled "Le Festival au Désert" (2004).


title: Robert Plant

text: On 23 June 2006, Plant was the headliner (backed by Ian Hunter's band) at the Benefit For Arthur Lee concert at New York's Beacon Theatre, a show which raised money for Lee's medical expenses from his bout with leukaemia. Plant and band performed thirteen songs – five by Arthur Lee & Love, five Led Zeppelin songs and three others, including a duet with Ian Hunter. At the show, Plant told the audience of his great admiration for Arthur Lee dating back to the mid-'60s. Lee died of his illness six weeks after the concert.


title: Robert Plant

text: An expansive box set of his solo work, "Nine Lives", was released in November 2006, which expanded all of his albums with various B-sides, demos, and live cuts. It was accompanied by a DVD. All his solo works were re-released with these extra tracks individually.


title: Robert Plant

text: In 2007, Plant contributed two tracks to the Fats Domino tribute album "", "It Keeps Rainin'" with the Lil' Band o' Gold and "Valley of Tears" with the Soweto Gospel Choir.


title: Robert Plant

text: In 2007 and 2008, Plant recorded and performed with bluegrass star Alison Krauss. A duet album, "Raising Sand", was released on 23 October 2007 on Rounder Records. The album, recorded in Nashville and Los Angeles and produced by T Bone Burnett, includes performances of lesser-known material from R&B, blues, folk and country songwriters including Mel Tillis, Townes Van Zandt, Gene Clark, Tom Waits, Doc Watson, Little Milton and the Everly Brothers. In February 2008 the song "Gone Gone Gone (Done Moved On)" from "Raising Sand" won a Grammy for Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals at the 50th Grammy Awards. In February 2009 at the 51st Grammy Awards, "Raising Sand" won 5 Grammys, for Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals, Best Country Collaboration with Vocals, and Contemporary Folk/Americana Album. The album has been successful critically and commercially, and was certified platinum on 4 March 2008.


title: Robert Plant

text: Plant and Krauss began an extended tour of the US and Europe in April 2008, playing music from "Raising Sand" and other American roots music as well as reworked Led Zeppelin tunes. The album was nominated for the Mercury Prize in July 2008. Also in 2008, Plant performed with bluegrass musicians at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival. He appeared as a surprise guest during Fairport Convention's set at the 2008 Cropredy Festival, performing Led Zeppelin's "The Battle of Evermore" with Kristina Donahue as a tribute to Sandy Denny.


title: Robert Plant

text: Plant performed with Strange Sensation guitarist Justin Adams and the West African riti (a one-string violin) master Juldeh Camara for the finale of the three day World of Music, Arts and Dance Festival in Abu Dhabi. Approximately 50,000 attended each of the free Womad concerts, which took place on the Corniche public beach from 23–25 April 2009.


title: Robert Plant

text: In July 2010, Plant embarked on a twelve-date summer tour in the United States with his newly formed group called Band of Joy (reprising the name of his first band in the 1960s). The group included singer Patty Griffin, singer-guitarist Buddy Miller, multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Darrell Scott, bassist-vocalist Byron House, and drummer-percussionist-vocalist Marco Giovino.


title: Robert Plant

text: A one-off show in the United States on 12 September 2010 at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City, was followed by an eleven-date autumn 2010 tour in Europe and a North America tour in 2011.


title: Robert Plant

text: A new studio album called "Band of Joy" was released on 13 September 2010 on the Rounder Records label. The album was nominated for Best Americana Album in the 2011 Grammy Awards, and Plant's performance of "Silver Rider" on the album (a cover from the Low album "The Great Destroyer") was nominated for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance.


title: Robert Plant

text: The band played their final scheduled show together at the Big Chill Festival at Eastnor Castle Deer Park in Herefordshire on 7 August 2011. The show ended with Plant bidding his bandmates "a fond farewell".


title: Robert Plant

text: September 2011 - Plant played in Marfa, TX at El Cosmic Trans - Pecos Festival as part of a band called Crown Vic consisting of Patty Griffin, Dony Wynn, David Grissom, Glenn Fukunaga, Michael Ramos.


title: Robert Plant

text: On 30 September 2011, Plant and Band of Joy played in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, as part of the 11th Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival.


title: Robert Plant

text: Released in October 2011, Plant duetted with Alfie Boe on "Song to the Siren" for Alfie's sixth album, Alfie, which he also recorded himself on 2002's "Dreamland".


title: Robert Plant

text: It was first reported that Robert Plant's new band, the Sensational Space Shifters, would be debuting at 2012's WOMAD festival in Wiltshire, England. An intimate warm up gig was then announced in Gloucester on 8 May 2012 to a crowd of 400. Although it was initially reported that there were 10 members of the band, along with Plant the band consists of former Strange Sensation members, Cast guitarist Liam "Skin" Tyson, Justin Adams, Billy Fuller and John Baggott along with Dave Smith and Juldeh Camara. Patty Griffin was the special guest on the first few shows prior to her new album release and subsequent tour.


title: Robert Plant

text: On 13 July 2012, the band released a download live album called "Sensational Space Shifters (Live in London July '12)". This album featured a mix of Strange Sensation and Led Zeppelin reinterpretations as well as covers and a spot by Patty Griffin. In addition to WOMAD and the Gloucester show, the Sensational Space Shifters were scheduled for the free Sunflower River Blues & Gospel Festival's 25th anniversary in Clarksdale, Mississippi on 10–12 August 2012.


title: Robert Plant

text: Released in 2014, "Lullaby and... The Ceaseless Roar" is Plant's tenth solo album and the first studio recording with his band the Sensational Space Shifters.


title: Robert Plant

text: On 28 June 2014, Plant and the Sensational Space Shifters played at the Glastonbury Extravaganza. The band featured West African musician Juldeh Camara, guitarists Skin Tyson and Justin Adams, drummer Dave Smith, Massive Attack keyboardist John Baggott, and bassist Billy Fuller. On 7 August 2014, Plant announced an autumn 2014 7-date North American tour from 25 September (in Port Chester, NY) to 7 October 2014 (in Los Angeles, CA).


title: Robert Plant

text: To celebrate Record Store Day 2015 (Saturday 18 April), Plant released a special 10-inch live EP titled "More Roar", which was limited to 10,000 copies. During a concert at Hammerstein Ballroom in New York City on 19 September 2015, Plant hinted at plans for a new album with the Sensational Space Shifters, stating, "We'll go make another record and then we'll come see you guys even more."


title: Robert Plant

text: On April 25, 2015, Plant headlined a special event, "Lead Belly at 125" - a tribute to American Folk Legend Lead Belly at Kennedy Centre in conjunction with the Grammy Museum and performed with Alison Krauss, Viktor Krauss, Buddy Miller.


title: Robert Plant

text: Plant covered Elbow's track, "Blanket of Night", featured on the British Red Cross' compilation LP "The Long Road", released on March 4, 2016. The LP aimed to raise awareness of the "struggles faced by refugees and asylum seekers at a time of increased global conflict and migration". ""We have a worldwide international catastrophe,"" says Plant. ""Talking about it is one thing, doing something about it is another. The position we are in, it’s paramount we all do our best one way or another to help."" Plant later confirmed that in October he would join artists including Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Patty Griffin, for select dates on the Lampedusa Concerts for Refugees tour. The tour across 11 North American cities was a series of acoustic concerts intended to raise awareness of the worldwide refugee crisis and funds to support educational programs for refugees.


title: Robert Plant

text: Plant's eleventh solo album, "Carry Fire," was released on 13 October 2017 and was the second studio album to be supported by his band the Sensational Space Shifters. In 2018, Plant received the AMA Lifetime Achievement Award at the UK Americana Honors & Awards. Plant headlined the Sunday night of Iceland's Secret Solstice Festival in Reykjavík on 23 June 2019.


title: Robert Plant

text: On March 7, 2019, Plant performed at the Third Annual LOVE ROCKS NYC, a benefit concert for God's Love We Deliver at the Beacon Theatre in NYC, hosted by Bill Murray, Martin Short and Chevy Chase amongst others, featuring an all-star line up including Sheryl Crow, Buddy Guy, Hozier, Billy F Gibbons, Jimmie Vaughan. The concert was presented by John Varvatos and Greg Williamson.


title: Robert Plant

text: Released via Plant's own Es Paranza label, a remastered version (with updated artwork) of "Fate of Nations" as part of 2019 Record Store Day with proceeds going to Greenpeace.


title: Robert Plant

text: In 2019, Plant formed a low-key acoustic band called Saving Grace and performed support slots in February 2019 for Fairport Convention and Seth Lakeman In March 2020, Saving Grace announced a US tour scheduled for May 2020 that was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.


title: Robert Plant

text: On 19 July 2021, Plant appeared onstage for his first post-pandemic show in Worthing, England, performing with his band Saving Grace for the first time since 2019. He went on to tour the UK with Saving Grace for their rescheduled shows.


title: Robert Plant

text: In 2021, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss released the 12-track studio album "Raise the Roof", produced by T Bone Burnett, as a follow-up to "Raising Sand." Accompanying the album's launch, Plant and Krauss performed a globally live-streamed set, broadcast from Nashville's Sound Emporium Studios.


title: Robert Plant

text: Plant performed with living members of Led Zeppelin both on 13 July 1985 for Live Aid (with Phil Collins and Tony Thompson on drums) and on 15 May 1988 for Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary. At the 1988 reunion, Jason Bonham, the son of Led Zeppelin's late drummer John Bonham, played drums. Both sets featured only a few songs, performed with minimal rehearsal. Plant was unhappy with both performances, saying that "it was like sleeping with your ex-wife but not making love." At the 1990 Silver Clef Award Winners Concert at Knebworth, Plant was joined by Jimmy Page. Some of their set was released on the subsequent live album and video. In 1995, Led Zeppelin were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Plant performed at the induction show with Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, Jason Bonham, Neil Young, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry, performing spirited versions of "Bring It On Home", "Honeybee" and "When the Levee Breaks".


title: Robert Plant

text: After years of reunion rumours, Led Zeppelin performed a full two-hour set on 10 December 2007 at the Ahmet Ertegün Tribute Concert, with Jason again filling in on drums. Despite enormous public demand, Plant declined a $200 million offer to tour with Led Zeppelin after the 2007 show. In interviews following the 2007 show, Plant left the door open to possible future performances with Led Zeppelin, saying that he enjoyed the reunion and felt that the show was strong musically. Although Page and Jones have expressed the strong desire to tour as Led Zeppelin, Plant has consistently opposed a full tour and has responded negatively to questions about another reunion. In a January 2008 interview, he stated that he does not want to "tour like a bunch of bored old men following the Rolling Stones around." In a statement on his web site in late 2008, Plant stated, "I will not be touring with Led Zeppelin or anyone else for the next two years. Anyone buying Led Zeppelin tickets will be buying bogus tickets."


title: Robert Plant

text: In February 2013, Plant hinted that he was open to a Led Zeppelin reunion in 2014, stating that he was not the reason for Led Zeppelin's dormancy for the Capricorns (Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones) "are quite contained in their own worlds and leave it to [him]", adding that he was "not the bad guy" and that he had "got nothing to do in 2014".


title: Robert Plant

text: In a spring 2014 interview with the BBC about the then forthcoming reissue of Led Zeppelin's first three albums, Page said he was sure fans would be keen on another reunion show, but Plant later replied that "the chances of it happening [were] zero". Page then told "The New York Times" that he was "fed up" with Plant's refusal to play, stating: "I was told last year that Plant said he is doing nothing in 2014, and what do the other two guys think? Well, he knows what the other guys think. Everyone would love to play more concerts for the band. He's just playing games, and I'm fed up with it, to be honest with you. I don't sing, so I can't do much about it", adding: "I definitely want to play live. Because, you know, I've still got a twinkle in my eye. I can still play. So, yeah, I'll just get myself into musical shape, just concentrating on the guitar."


title: Robert Plant

text: On 30 July 2014, NME revealed that Plant was "slightly disappointed and baffled" by Page in an ongoing Led Zeppelin dispute during which Page declared he was "fed up" with Plant delaying Led Zeppelin reunion plans. Instead, Plant offered Led Zeppelin's guitarist to write acoustically with him as he is interested in working with Page again but only in an unplugged way. Page responded:


title: Robert Plant

text: Plant married Maureen Wilson on 9 November 1968. The couple had three children: daughter Carmen Jane (1968), (who later married Charlie Jones, Plant's bass player for solo tours); and sons Karac Pendragon (1972–1977), and Logan Romero (1979). The couple divorced in August 1983. In 1977, during Led Zeppelin's US tour, their five-year-old son, Karac, died of a stomach illness. The song "All My Love", co-written with John Paul Jones, is a tribute to him.


title: Robert Plant

text: Plant is interested in Welsh history and donated money to the creation of a bronze statue of the Welsh prince Owain Glyndŵr, at Pennal Church, near Machynlleth, in Wales, unveiled in September 2004. He is also understood to have contributed funds to a slate carving of Glyndŵr's coat of arms at the Celtica museum in Machynlleth. Plant is part of a Glyndŵr network, and attends meetings about him in Wales.


title: Robert Plant

text: In the New Year Honours List 2009, Plant was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire "for services to music" and on 10 July 2009 invested by the Prince of Wales.


title: Robert Plant

text: On 14 August 2009 football club Wolverhampton Wanderers announced that Plant was to become the club's third vice-president. Plant officially received the honour before kick-off at the club's first match of the season against West Ham United. Plant was five years old when he first visited Molineux Stadium. He recalled in an interview with his local paper, the "Express & Star", in August 2010: "I was five when my dad took me down for the first time and Billy Wright waved at me. Honest, he did. And that was it – I was hooked from that moment."


title: Robert Plant

text: In late 2010 BBC Two aired a documentary titled "Robert Plant: By Myself". It features Robert Plant discussing his journey with Led Zeppelin and various projects since.


title: Robert Plant

text: In a July 2012 interview with "The Independent" newspaper, Plant stated he "eloped and ran off to Texas" with Band of Joy co-vocalist, American singer Patty Griffin. Plant's UK-based manager told "E! News" later that Plant was apparently being cheeky when he used the word "eloped" to describe his home life, for "Robert has not married Patty Griffin," instead "He was just referring to the fact that he's been residing in Texas" with her. According to a July 2012 "Ultimate Classic Rock" article, Plant and Griffin had been dating for over a year, spending half of their time together in Austin, Texas. On 23 August 2014, "The Independent" indicated Plant had broken up with Griffin: ""Patty and I tried a sort of zig-zag across the Atlantic," Plant told the publication, "but she didn't share my penchant for cider and she used to marvel at the Black Country character I became after four pints of Thatchers. My feelings are very much ones of sadness and regret."


title: Robert Plant

text: In early 2013, Plant contributed to a community buyout scheme to save the Bath music venue, the Bell Inn.


title: Robert Plant

text: In 2020, Plant donated money towards frontline medical supplies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The money went to the GoFundMe page of a small clothing manufacturer in Kidderminster, England that makes scrubs for local hospitals.


title: Robert Plant

text: Plant has influenced the style of many of his contemporaries, including Geddy Lee, Ann Wilson, Sammy Hagar, and later rock vocalists such as Jeff Buckley and Jack White who imitated his performing style. Freddie Mercury of Queen, and Axl Rose of Guns N' Roses were influenced by Plant. "Encyclopædia Britannica" notes that "Exaggerating the vocal style and expressive palette of blues singers such as Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters, Plant created the sound that has defined much hard rock and heavy metal singing: a high range, an abundance of distortion, loud volume, and emotional excess". Plant received the Knebworth Silver Clef Award in 1990.


title: Robert Plant

text: In 2006, hard rock/heavy metal magazine "Hit Parader" named Plant as No. 1 on its list of the 100 Greatest Metal Vocalists of All Time, a list that included Rob Halford of Judas Priest (No. 2), Steven Tyler (No. 3), Freddie Mercury (No. 6), Geddy Lee (No. 13) and Paul Stanley (No. 18), all of whom were influenced by Plant. In 2008, "Rolling Stone" named Plant the 15th-greatest singer of all time on their list of "100 Greatest Singers of All Time". In 2009, he was voted the "greatest voice in rock" in a poll conducted by "Planet Rock". He was included in the "Q" magazine's 2009 list of "Artists of the Century" and was ranked at number 8 in their list of "100 Greatest Singers" in 2007. In 2009, Plant also won the Outstanding Contribution to Music prize at the Q Awards. He was placed at No. 3 on "SPIN"s list of "The 50 Greatest Rock Frontmen of All Time".


title: Robert Plant

text: On 20 September 2010 National Public Radio (NPR) named Plant as one of the "50 Great Voices" in the world.


title: Robert Plant

text: In July 2018, Plant won the Silver Cleff Integro Outstanding Award, announced by music charity Nordoff Robbins.


title: Robert Plant

text: On 15 March 2022 Plant was the guest on BBC Radio 4's "Desert Island Discs". His musical choices included "I Ain't Superstitious" by Howlin' Wolf and "Ohio" by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. His book choice was "The Earliest English Poems", translated by Michael Alexander, his luxury item was a basket containing photos of homing pigeons and his favourite musical piece was "Serenade" by Mario Lanza.


title: MS Dhoni

text: Mahendra Singh Dhoni (; born 7 July 1981) is an Indian former international cricketer who was captain of the Indian national cricket team in limited-overs formats from 2007 to 2017 and in Test cricket from 2008 to 2014. He is also the current captain of CSK in the IPL. He led India to victory in three ICC trophies 2007 ICC World Twenty20, 2011 Cricket World Cup and 2013 ICC Champions Trophy, the most by any Indian captain. Under his captaincy India also won 2010 and 2016 Asia Cup. Also under his leadership India won 2010 and 2011 ICC Test Mace and 2013 ICC ODI Championship. A right-handed wicket-keeper batsman. He scored over 10,000 runs in One Day Internationals, with the reputation as one of the best finishers in the game. He is also one of the greatest wicket-keepers in the history of cricket.


title: MS Dhoni

text: In Indian domestic cricket he played for Bihar and Jharkhand Cricket team. He is the captain of Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in the Indian Premier League. He captained the side to championships in the 2010, 2011, 2018 and 2021 editions of IPL league. Also under his captaincy Chennai Super Kings (CSK) Won Champions League T20 two times, in 2010 and 2014.


title: MS Dhoni

text: Dhoni made his ODI debut on 23 December 2004, against Bangladesh in Chittagong, and played his first Test a year later against Sri Lanka. He played his first T20I also a year later against South Africa. In 2007, he took over the ODI captaincy from Rahul Dravid and he also selected as T20I captain of India in this year. In 2008, he was selected as Test captain. His captaincy record in Tests format was mixed, successfully leading India to a series win against New Zealand in 2008 and the Border-Gavaskar Trophy (home series in 2010 and 2013) against Australia while losing to Sri Lanka, Australia, England, and South Africa by big margins in away conditions.


title: MS Dhoni

text: He announced his retirement from Tests on 30 December 2014, and stepped down as captain of T20Is and ODIs in 2017. On 15 August 2020, Dhoni retired from all formats of international cricket and continues to play in the IPL.


title: MS Dhoni

text: Dhoni received India's highest sports honour, the Major Dhyanchand Khel Ratna Award in 2008 for his outstanding achievements and the Government of India honoured him India's fourth civilian award Padma Shri in 2009 and third civilian award Padma Bhushan in 2018. He is the only cricket captain in the world to win all three of the Cricket World Cup, ICC Men's T20 World Cup and ICC Champions Trophy.


title: MS Dhoni

text: Dhoni was born in Ranchi, Bihar (now in Jharkhand) and hails from a Hindu Rajput family with roots in Uttarakhand. He is the youngest of three children of Pan Singh and Devaki Devi. His paternal village Lwali, is in Jainti Tehsil, Lamgara block of the Almora District of Uttarakhand. His parents moved from Uttarakhand to Ranchi, Jharkhand where his father worked as a pump operator in junior management position in MECON Colony situated in Doranda area in Ranchi. Unlike Dhoni, his uncle and cousins spell their surname as Dhauni.


title: MS Dhoni

text: Previously Dhoni was the goalkeeper for his DAV Jawahar Vidya Mandir school's football team, but after seeing his goalkeeping skills, coach Keshav Ranjan Banerjee, one who inspired Dhoni to be a cricketer, picked him to play cricket for his school team. His exceptional wicketkeeping skills allowed him to become the regular wicketkeeper at the Commando Cricket Club (1995–1998). Based on his performance at club cricket, he was picked for the 1997/98 season Vinoo Mankad Trophy Under-16 Championship, where he performed well.


title: MS Dhoni

text: From 2001 to 2003, Dhoni worked as a Travelling Ticket Examiner (TTE) at Kharagpur railway station under South Eastern Railway in Midnapore (W), a district in West Bengal.