Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Listening to John Bonham is just a sheer celebration of his playing - it can't help but fill you with so much joy.
You know what you can gain when you sit down with the Moroccans. As a person and as a musician. That's how you grow.
That's one of the problems with the Zeppelin stuff. It sounds ridiculous on MP3. You can't hear what's there properly.
I can only listen to what I'm working on, at the time. I can't listen to anything else because I don't want to copy it.
Live Aid did feel like one hour's rehearsal after several years, but to be part of Live Aid was wonderful. It reall was.
I'm not afraid of death. That is the greatest mystery of all. That'll be it, that one. But it is all a race against time.
Every musician wants to do something which will hold up for a long time, and I guess we did it with 'Stairway to Heaven.'
I really don't like showing people how I play things; it's a little embarrassing because it always looks so simple to me.
I think it's time to travel, start gathering some real right-in-there experiences with street musicians around the world.
I'm involved in all things musical. It's all consuming, even if it doesn't necessarily manifest as a record or a concert.
'Communication Breakdown' - it was punchy and direct, with a real attitude that was different to other bands going around.
You absorb so much from whatever your environment is, as an artist, and you learn to take from it what can help you create.
My guitar playing touches so many different areas of the form, but the important thing is what it represents across the form.
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.
The Yardbirds folded in 1968, and within a handful of months, Led Zeppelin was not only a band but also a very successful one.
It's interesting when something new comes along, a band of dwarfs playing electronic harps or something, but I'm not searching.
A lot of people can't be on their own. They get frightened. Isolation doesn't bother me at all. It gives me a sense of security.
I think it was that we were really seasoned musicians. We had serious roots that spanned different cultures, obviously the blues.
Music can always be a life-changing experience, for musicians and fans, or at least life-affecting, but it depends on to what degree.
My influences were the riff-based blues coming from Chicago in the Fifties - Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Billy Boy Arnold records.
I do know there's a lot of music where Led Zeppelin has been leant on. We didn't do anything about it. And I wouldn't want to, either.
I'm not interested in turning anybody on to anybody that I'm turned on to... if people want to find things, they find them themselves.
I guess the solo from 'Achilles Last Stand' is in the same tradition as the solo from 'Stairway to Heaven'...it is on that level to me.
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.
I'm not trying to be flippant here, but I just play the guitar, don't I? That is my characteristic, and it's my identity as you hear it.
If you're working at the factory and you're cursing every day that you get up, at all costs get out of it. You'll just make yourself ill.
I do really believe that all guitarists have a different character that comes through, that's a strong character, the stronger the person is.
Right from the first time we went to America in 1968, Led Zeppelin was a word-of-mouth thing. You can't really compare it to how it is today.
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.
Here's where it goes with Led Zeppelin. It didn't matter what was going on around us, because the character of Led Zeppelin's music was so strong.
Traveling the world was a constant thing, rich with experiences. But all of it was relative to being able to play live onstage and really stretch out.
It's good to be in a position to know that I've inspired musicians, from what I've learned to lay down personally, and collectively with Led Zeppelin.
When I went over to the States to promote Outrider, everyone was telling me I was a blues guitarist. I'm not a bloody blues guitarist. I'm a guitarist.
I believe every guitar player inherently has something unique about their playing. They just have to identify what makes them different and develop it.
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.
Once I get onstage the tension explodes and I'm fine. I'm in another world - in a trance almost, doing what I love best, expressing myself through guitar.
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.
Actually, I'm getting one made up with eight necks and I'm going to get a wheelwright to make a big rim around it and then I can do cartwheels off the stage.
I don't really want to go on about my personal beliefs or my involvement in magic. I'm not interested in turning anybody on to anybody that I'm turned on to.
Led Zeppelin was a band that would change things around substantially each time it played... We were becoming tighter and tighter, to the point of telepathy.
So far I've been very, very fortunate because it appears that people like to hear the music I like to play. What more fortunate position can a musician be in?
If you write a written book, you're gonna get slowed up by lawyers wanting to see what you say about this person, that person - I couldn't be bothered with it.
The blues appealed to me, but so did rock. The early rockabilly guitarists like Cliff Gallup and Scotty Moore were just as important to me as the blues guitarists.
I played guitar all my life, all the way through the Yardbirds, but I knew that for me this was going to be a guitar vehicle, because that's what I wanted it to be.
I always felt if we were going in to do an album, there should already be a lot of structure already made up so we could get on with that and see what else happened.
You get as much out of rock & roll artistically as you put into it. There's nobody who can teach you. You're on your own and that's what I find so fascinating about it.
In the 1960s and into the '70s, everyone in their own way was trying to open up the musical horizon. There shouldn't be a wall that you're going toward and bouncing off.
There's a certain standard in classical music that allows the application of the term "genius," but you're treading on thin ice if you start applying it to rock & rollers.
I don't know whether I'll reach 40. I don't know whether I'll reach 35. I can't be sure about that. I am bloody serious. I am very, very serious. I didn't think I'd make 30.
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.