I've been watching some of Elizabeth Zharoff's reaction / analysis channel "Charismatic Voice" on YouTube, and she's fun, partly because of her technical knowledge and partly because of her enthusiasm for the music she's listening to.
I hadn't seen this version of Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" before, and it is pretty cool, but it made me think about the sociology of live performance and the psychology of audiences. Zharoff's right that the song is about, well, call it "making love" to keep this PG. But notice that much of the audience is male, and there's not the teen-girl shrieking that you hear in Beatles concerts from just a few years before this one. Despite the band's undoubted sex appeal, Zep was a boys' band. So Plant is "making love" not only to the girls in the audience but to (maybe unawares) the boys as well, and (probably unawares) the boys are into it: those are male voices singing "Bay-bay" back to him toward the end.
Some will promptly argue that they're identifying with him not wanting him, but there's not a clear line between the two. It's okay, boys, you're not gay, just swept away by every inch of Robert's love! I was a conflicted 18-year-old gay boy when "Whole Lotta Love" was first released in 1969, and though I didn't name it, I certainly felt it. As for straight boys, as I've said before, everybody talks about sexual fluidity and claims that we're all a little bit gay until it comes to cases. Being in a mass audience makes it safer: people feel free to let loose in a way they wouldn't do face-to-face, one-on-one, with their idol. And singing back "Bay-bay!" doesn't mean you'd put out - neither would all or most of the girls. Nor, I think, would I have done so if given the opportunity at the time or after I'd come out: Plant was not really my type. What I responded to was the voice, the sound, the propulsive beat of the band, but all that did stir me erotically. It still does. The beauty of being in a crowd like this one is that you can feel it without thinking about what it means or what you'd like to do about it; most of the time you don't want to anything about it. The point is that boys aren't officially supposed to feel ravished by a
male performer -- it violates the masculine code -- but they are
anyway.
