Austin - it's a stimulating center. In this conversation, the very first two questions were talking about my kind of wanderlust and my adventures. Some people at my time in life travel forever. I don't know whether it's the British or the Australians - whoever it is, you can kind of stagger into some sort of far-off bastion in the middle of nowhere, and you'll find someone from Britain or someone from Australia or maybe an American.
Everybody's got something to tell you. And most people have told me to do the obvious thing as far as my career goes. Which would have sent me tottering into the abyss.
The way I see it, rock n' roll is folk music.
Old men do it better. We're not so sensitive in certain areas.
I'm just lucky because my kids are grown-up - I love them, very proud of them, and we are in close contact as big-time friends, but they don't need me that much now and I can actually enjoy this wonderful world of music.
I hate cliché. And when you're a rock singer in 1966, or whatever it was, psychedelic blues, through to the '70s, which we know all about, and the '80s, which was a scramble to hang on in, and the '90s, which was a great time for experimentation... and I'm really still excited. The huge vast diagonals within the music that I've been involved with.
I owe everything to the musicians I work with.
When you're singing we all phrase each other in the most remarkable ways. I might hit some sort of thing I've never done before - some vocal pattern. Bonzo will pick it up - he'll phrase with me instantly and then Pagey may join in or start some other phrase - it's like a quadrant.
I listen to the crowds [laughs]... I like Blind Melon very much.
I think I could sing and shear a few sheep at the same time.
I daresay one good concert justifies a week of satisfaction at home.
I'm a grandfather now.
I love the feeling of letting fly, of pushing as far as I could go with my voice. The only way you can really graduate how you do it is by doing it regularly to people who don't have to be super impressed. You can do it in the studio all day long but you don't get the flashback that you get onstage.
Lately, I'm spending more and more time working with non-rock musicians and leaving the mainstream - almost dissolving into another world, musically.
There's nothing new under the sun - you just get a can of paint out.
I'd break out in hives if I had to sing (`Stairway to Heaven') in every show. I wrote those lyrics and found that song to be of some importance and consequence in 1971, but 17 years later, I don't know. It's just not for me. I sang it at the Atlantic Records show because I'm an old softie and it was my way of saying thank you to Atlantic because I've been with them for 20 years. But no more of `Stairway to Heaven' for me.
I am a reflection of what I sing. Sometimes I have to get serious because the things Ive been through are serious.
How much do people really want to learn? I mean, some people get into a groove and they stay with it indefinitely. And what starts off as a great moment of explosive passion can end up as cabaret 25, 30 years later. It just depends on whether you go and find the right habitat to extend yourself.
I don't want to scream 'Immigrant Song' every night for the rest of my life, and I'm not sure I could.
The calendar and the mirror - they're bastards.
When you're 20 years old and you're making points with volume and dynamism, it's a fantastic thing to do.
The idea of actually taking sharp turns left and right has always intrigued me, but I've never really been bold enough to do that. As musicians go, I've allowed myself to be carried by other people's enthusiasm into places where I've learned a lot. There is no real tumult anymore. What I want to do, I do! I'm pretty fortunate.
[Elvis] Presley was definitely a great inspiration to every guy who ever had a hard-on in the whole of the Western world, I should think. He shook everybody well and true, and we just kept on shakin'. But he started it.
I've still got a twinkle in me.
All over the world, the idea of creating an melange of international musics, it's a very healthy thing.
