Once I got a guitar that was relatively user-friendly, but not super-duper easy, I really came on as a guitarist, at that point. It helped. It was a super-expensive guitar either, but something needs to steer you a bit, if you're playing an instrument that is really hard.
I'm pretty optimistic about the future of rock... it will be back to composition as in classical music or jazz.
The idea of a hypnotic riff as the prime mover of a piece of music has been around for a long time, whether you're talking about the Delta blues or music from Middle Eastern and African cultures.
The gut-strung guitar, the classical guitar, that is a whole different world on its own. When you think what the guitar can do and what every individual player does with a guitar, everyone has their own identity coming through the guitar.
I don't like being stuck in one situation, day to day.
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 think it was that we were really seasoned musicians. We had serious roots that spanned different cultures, obviously the blues.
The key to Zeppelin's longevity has been change.
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 remember one particular occasion when I hadn't played a solo for, quite literally, a couple of months. And I was asked to play a solo on a rock & roll thing. I played it and felt that what I'd done was absolute crap. I was so disgusted with myself that I made my mind up that I had to get out of it. It was messing me right up.
I like change and I like contrast.
I think it's time to travel, start gathering some real right-in-there experiences with street musicians around the world.
I'm very fortunate because I love what I'm doing.
But if you want me to knock Kingdom Come, all I will say is that I heard the guitarist said he'd never heard my playing, and I'd defy any guitarist in American not to have heard Led Zeppelin.
You don't find geniuses in street musicians, but that doesn't mean to say you can't be really good.
When you hear the melodic structures of what classical musicians put together and you compare it to that of a rock & roll record, there's a hell of a long way rock & roll has to go.
There's too many good musicians around for the music around for the business to be sagging.
I had another idea of getting a traveling medicine wagon with a dropdown side and traveling around England. That might sound crazy to you, but over there it's so rural you can do it. Just drop down the side and play through big battery amps and mixers and it can all be as temporary or as permanent as I want it to be.
There's always music that moves me. It doesn't necessarily mean that it's within the parenthesis of rock or blues, or whatever. It's usually far more reaching than that. It can be in many different genres.
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 suggested back in 1980 to do a chronological live album, but there wasn't that much enthusiasm for it.
The element of change has been the thing, really. We put out the first one, then the second... then a third LP totally different from them. It's the reason we were able to keep it together.
The beauty of the band was you never knew what was going to come out next.
I don't feel I have to top myself at all.
The only term I won't accept is "genius."
