It was a very, very hard thing to do, leaving Florence + The Machine’s set early, but there was a very important reason: getting to Robert Plant’s set at the Which Stage across the Bonnaroo grounds. The man is a legend, of course, one well-suited for a Bonnaroo slot, and even as he comes onstage in just a t-shirt, in front of a bunch of musicians you don’t recognize, there is something next level that happens. Something that might not be talked about enough with Plant is how interestingly he’s aged, how he’s managed to explore new styles that fit his aging voice (which is still remarkably well-preserved, though) and the increasingly aged hippie/wizened mystic vibes he gives off these day. With his new band the Sensational Space Shifters, he plays old blues standards but puts them over rolling, African rhythms, or coats them in heavy electronics, or throws in a near-krautrock beat for good measure. All of this is to say: even if Plant was one of these old guys who refused to acknowledge his past, he’d still be worth seeing, because he’s doing interesting things late in his career and not quite getting enough credit for it.

Thing is, he’s not one of these old guys who refuses to acknowledge his past. Shockingly, most of the set is devoted to Zeppelin material. You’d think that he’d have some disdain for this, given his demeanor in interviews regarding a Led Zeppelin reunion, but he still seems so full of joy playing these songs to people who are so full of joy at their opportunity to actually get to see Robert Plant sing “Going To California” and “Black Dog” live. Every now and then he even wields the mic stand like a weapon, like he used to all those years ago. The sheer casualness of just being able to walk up to a stage and see Plant, and to have other worthy artists conflicting with him (it takes a lot to make me miss a Caribou set; Plant qualifies), only makes the experience of seeing these songs performed all the more surreal. Plant himself kinda tempers the more overwhelming elements of it because he kind of acts like an old uncle who just wants to tell you about the history of this particular blues song they’re going to play, or who’s going to make a bunch of dry jokes onstage. “It’s good to be back, if I’ve been here before,” he said early on. “Here’s a song from the Appalachians, which is somewhere in England,” an anecdote congratulating their mandolin tuner in Nashville for having a child that day but ending with “But he should’ve been here tuning that shit,” and simply “How the fuck did I get here, huh?” all followed.

The set was drawing to a close as they settled into a slow blues jam. Plant sang a few lines, and then at some point snuck in “Because you need coolin’…” and you could feel the tension rise in the crowd. He raised his eyebrows, and shouted to a band member: “I got my voice back!” And not long after, that immortal riff from “Whole Lotta Love” echoed out from the stage and erased any other experience outside of that singular moment. This is one of those songs that’s a gateway thing when you’re getting into music, then it might get a little too over-exposed or old or whatever, and then you come back around to it a few years later and realize there is some unmistakable, cosmic power to what that band could do. This isn’t that, but it’s unreal to see Plant sing this stuff. They walked offstage, and for a moment it was unclear whether he’d come back for one more song with the few minutes still allotted for his set. When they did finally come back out, he told some story about milkmaids from Devon or something who used to sing an old song, and how he and his band were going to bring this “beautiful refrain” to the people of Bonnaroo, with peace and love, naturally. And then they went into “Rock And Roll.” I don’t know if anyone could walk away from that with any doubt that they’d just seen one of the greatest rock singers of all time.