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.
I'm at my best when I'm exhausted and under pressure.
That's the music that I play at home all the time, Joni Mitchell. Court and Spark I love because I'd always hoped that she'd work with a band. But the main thing with Joni is that she's able to look at something that's happened to her, draw back and crystallize the whole situation, then write about it. She brings tears to my eyes, what more can I say? It's bloody eerie. I can relate so much to what she says. "Now old friends are acting strange/They shake their heads/They say I've changed."
There's a very old recording maxim that goes, 'Distance makes depth.' I've used that a hell of a lot-whether it's tracking guitars or the whole band. People are used to close-miking amps, but I'd have a mic out around the back, as well, and then balance the two. Also, you shouldn't have to use EQ in the studio if the instruments sound right. You should be able to get the right tones simply with the science of microphone placement.
I'm still terrified of flying. I really have to get drunk to fly. I've found that I've developed fears I never had before... fears of heights, claustrophobia... only in cities, though, never in the country.
If you are on to something creative, school can also inhibit you. The wrong teacher, man, can really mess you up.
Crowley didn't have a very high opinion of women, and I don't think he was wrong.
Led Zeppelin didn't get that kind of Beatles screaming. We had a more sort of macho crowd. But I remember once in the early days of The Yardbirds, we were playing on an ice rink, and the stage was mobbed by screaming girls. I had my clothes torn off me. That's a really uncomfortable experience, let me tell you.
Domesticity and all that isn't really for me.
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'm still searching for an angel with a broken wing. It's not very easy to find them these days.
Artists say that paintings are never done. I sort of feel the same way about music. I would never say something is perfect. There are performances that can generate a lot of emotion in me when I hear them, but I can't say if anything is perfect.
Seeing people's faces, really getting off on them, makes me incredibly happy. Genuinely.
You can't expect to be the same person you were three years ago. Some people expect you to be and can't come to terms with the fact that if a year has elapsed between LPs, that means one year's worth of changes. The material consequently is affected by that, the lyrics are affected by that... the music too.
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.
You can't just find yourself doing something and not happy doing it.
I don't care what critics and other people think.
All my houses are isolated. Many is the time I just stay home alone.
Music can always be a life-changing experience, for musicians and fans, or at least life-affecting, but it depends on to what degree.
No. I usually rest in my satin-lined coffin, actually. I'm not allowed out in daylight hours.
I don't go walking into things blind.
I deal in emotions. It's the harmonic side that's important. That's the side I expected to be much further along on than I am now. That just means to say that I've got to keep at it.
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?
Well, Led Zeppelin IV! That's it really. I'll tell you why the album had no title - because we were so fed up with the reactions to the third album, that people couldn't understand why that record wasn't a direct continuation of the second album. And then people said we were a hype and all, which was the furthest thing from what we were. So we just said, `let's put out an album with no title at all!' That way, either people like it or they don't... but we still got bad reviews!
I'm obsessed - not just interested, obsessed - with folk music, street music, the parallels between a country's street music and its so-called classical and intellectual music, the way certain scales have travelled right across the globe. All this ethnological and musical interaction fascinates me. Have you heard any trance music? That's the thing.
