I can't think of a greater guitar icon than someone who has the musical intellect to change what was there before and take music in another direction. That's a guitar hero for me.
Nobody could have predicted the effect of John Bonham's drum introduction on 'Good Times, Bad Times,' because no matter what he'd played in before, he'd never had the chance to flex his muscles and play like John Bonham.
We were lucky in the days of Led Zeppelin. Each album was different. We didn't have to continue a formula or produce a certain number of singles. Because, in those days, radio was still playing albums. That was really good.
I'm always looking for the creative spark. Always.
The fourth album encapsulated some remarkable music that was really groundbreaking. We were able to have something like 'When the Levee Breaks,' which, sonically, was very menacing. But then you had the flip side: something like 'Going to California,' which is really intimate.
I always want to do my very best, and it's frustrating to have something hold me back.
If people want to find things, they find them themselves.
I'm involved in all things musical. It's all consuming, even if it doesn't necessarily manifest as a record or a concert.
Zeppelin vinyl is quite revered in audiophile circles.
'Boogie Chillen',' by John Lee Hooker - that is a riff.
The whole thing about 'The Rover' is the whole swagger of it, the whole guitar attitude swagger. I'm afraid I've got to say it, but it's the sort of thing that is so apparent when you hear 'Rumble' by Link Wray - it's just total attitude, isn't it?
My vocation is more in composition really than anything else - building up harmonies using the guitar, orchestrating the guitar like an army, a guitar army.
I liked the Sex Pistols' music. I thought it was superb.
I have one of those gravel-y voices with no range to it.
I would say New York, Chicago, Memphis, and Los Angeles were my favorites.
You shouldn't really have to use EQ in the studio if the instruments sound good. It should all be done with microphones and microphone placement.
I'm pretty loyal to my guitars, you know, but then they're pretty loyal to me, too.
I don't really know anything about sales figures, to be honest with you.
I wasn't into jazz so much - I preferred things raw.
I'm just looking for an angel with a broken wing.
Isolation doesn't bother me at all. It gives me a sense of security.
I wanted to emulate music from America - young punks playing rock n' roll is what it was. I read part of Keith Richards' autobiography, and it was totally parallel with me, learning from American records.
I'm not a guitar hero.
I may not believe in myself, but I believe in what I'm doing.
'Communication Breakdown' - it was punchy and direct, with a real attitude that was different to other bands going around.
Every musician wants to do something which will hold up for a long time, and I guess we did it with 'Stairway to Heaven.'
John Peel made his reputation with his radio show and his record label, Dandelion, by championing the underdog.
I play like I play. You hear it on 'Celebration Day.' It's pretty good for a one-night shot.
I've played guitar in so many different styles, and I want to revisit them all.
Playing in my early bands, working as a studio musician, producing and going to art school was, in retrospect, my apprenticeship. I was learning and creating a solid foundation of ideas, but I wasn't really playing music.
I wasn't a very good draughtsman.
From meeting Robert Plant, John Bonham, and John Paul Jones, teaming up, rehearsing, playing selected gigs outside of Britain, coming back into Olympic Studios to record the first album, and then going to America, which we crack open like a nut with the debut record - all that happened, literally, within months.
I was excited about opening for Vanilla Fudge because I was a big fan of theirs.
It was an extraordinary connection, the synergy within the band. There was an area of ESP between Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, John Bonham, and myself.
Jack White is an extraordinary person because he's like a three-dimensional chess player. He thinks so far ahead.
I prefer to hear an artist's work and what they can do, so as far as I'm concerned, I'd get a lot more out of a collection of songs to be able to understand what the musician is doing.
How many guitars do I have? I don't know. I don't know! But I think the answer to it is, more than I can play at any one point in time. Even though I do have double necks, so I can try and play more than at one time!
I can play in many sorts of categories because we've seen that with Led Zeppelin, all the acoustic stuff, and this, that and the other.
My influences were the riff-based blues coming from Chicago in the Fifties - Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Billy Boy Arnold records.
The passing of John Bonham... Let's just put it... Before we say, 'the passing of John Bonham,' the introduction of John Bonham on the first album and 'Good Times Bad Times,' it changes drumming overnight.
There is no point in putting out 'The Complete BBC Sessions,' and someone's growling that you missed something.
I can understand why we got bad reviews. We went right over people's heads. One album would follow another and would have nothing to do with what we'd done before. People didn't know what was going on.
In the Led Zeppelin shows of the Sixties and Seventies, it was the same numbers every night, but they were constantly in a state of flux. If I played something good, really substantial, I'd stick it in again.
The album's not dead for me; I still buy vinyl albums.
Led Zeppelin was an affair of the heart. Each of the members was important to the sum total of what we were.
Every album that I've attempted, I suppose, has been different - it's bound to be.
The thing about Led Zeppelin was that it was always four musicians at the top of their game, but they could play like a band.
That's exactly why I came into music in the first place: to be inspired by what I hear to make it something else, to make it my own. That's how culture, creativity, moves, isn't it?
I love playing. If it was down to just that, it would be utopia. But it's not. It's airplanes, hotel rooms, limousines, and armed guards standing outside rooms. I don't get off on that part of it at all.
