By Dean Goodman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - These are confusing times for fans of heavy metal, people who like their rock 'n' roll leavened with thunderous guitars and the occasional satanic reference.

Black Sabbath singer Ozzy Osbourne, the self-described "Prince of Darkness," has become a TV sitcom star, and now his counterpart from Led Zeppelin, Robert Plant, is singing old hippie songs. What could be next: Britney fronting AC/DC?

While Osbourne plays America's favorite befuddled dad, fellow Englishman Plant is touring with his first solo album in nine years, "Dreamland," a collection largely made up of cover songs.

Plant, whose flowing locks earned him the sobriquet "Golden God," fronted one of the biggest rock bands of the 1970s, liberally borrowing from old blues artists to fashion such anthems as "Whole Lotta Love" and the eight-minute rock radio staple "Stairway to Heaven."

When the band broke up after the 1980 death of drummer John Bonham, Plant carved out a solid solo career and then reunited with Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page in the mid-1990s for two albums and some rigorous touring.

"Dreamland" (Universal), on which he is backed by his new band Strange Sensations, contains only two original songs. Many of the other tracks are linked to the 1960s: "Hey Joe," a song popularized by Jimi Hendrix, Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren," the Youngbloods' "Darkness Darkness," and the Grateful Dead-associated "Morning Dew."

SIXTIES NOT SO BAD

Do we really need another tribute to a turbulent era that seems mired in cloying flower-power nostalgia?

"If you like, the whole sentiment of those times is now fit only for advertising yogurts ... with bunches of girls dancing with tie-dyed T-shirts on," Plant, 54, said in a recent interview with Reuters.

"But there's a lot more to it than that: youth culture developing a responsibility and the musicians echoing that at the time, with all the crises and Vietnam. ... I thought it was a really strong period and I thought it was an eloquent time."

At any rate, he doubts that people buying his CD will spend too much time thinking about such matters, "because if you weren't there, you wouldn't get the message."

Plant is only too aware of the pitfalls of using music out of context. He would never have guessed in 1974 that "Kashmir ( news - web sites)," the Eastern opus he co-wrote with Page and Bonham, would be used without permission 18 years later to accompany a nun-rape scene in Abel Ferrara's film "Bad Lieutenant."

"Bit sad really," he said.

Led Zeppelin has been more open to licensing its songs since then, allowing its music to be used in Cameron Crowe's "Almost Famous," the Munich Olympics documentary "One Day in September" and in a series of ads for a Detroit automaker.

Other songs on "Dreamland" include a cover of Bob Dylan's 1975 "One More Cup of Coffee" and radical reworkings of blues tunes by Bukka White, John Lee Hooker, Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup and Robert Johnson.

He describes "Dreamland" as a "psychedelic trance weave," blending musical styles of pre-Saharan peoples like the Tuareg and the Gnaoua with the spooky sounds of the British groups his bandmates used to play in, such as the Cure and Portishead. It may be a bit too much for the masses, though: the album spent just four weeks on the U.S. charts.

ENOUGH WITH THE NEW SONGS

Plant estimates he has been credited on 130 songs in his 34-year career, and he did not feel like adding to the total when it came time to make "Dreamland." He wouldn't call it writers block, though.

"I just thought I'd written enough," he said.

Plant finds himself confused by modern rock, singling out the likes of Pearl Jam, Linkin Park and Korn for contributing to the "digitally recorded, squeaky-clean, insubstantial mess" on the radio. The thumbs-up go to edgier bands like Flaming Lips and White Stripes.

As a member of the rock establishment, it's perhaps only a matter of time before he joins Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney as a knight of the realm -- provided the queen hasn't read "Hammer of the Gods," a lurid Led Zeppelin memoir.

"I am already the Golden God," he sniffs. "How can I step down that far?"

Plant is having none of that royalty stuff anyway, as he's still rather annoyed about the fifth-century Anglo-Saxon invasion of Britain by Germanic tribes. The native Celts were pushed back into the hills of Wales, near where Plant lives now, working on his tennis game and watching "Frasier."

He still has some musical aims, and is looking forward to a risky trip to Mali next January for the third annual Festival in the Desert, featuring performances by Tuareg peoples in a volatile part of the African nation.

"I'd like to write a big rock anthem again," he adds. "I just need to have a listen to Korn a bit more and then I might get the idea of how to do it." Reuters/Variety