Jimmy Page
'Communication Breakdown' - it was punchy and direct, with a real attitude that was different to other bands going around.Collection: Communication
I'm just looking for an angel with a broken wing.
I may not believe in myself, but I believe in what I'm doing.
You get a chance like that maybe once in your lifetime, and you are lucky to sustain it over that period of time. It doesn't mean to say that whatever I do in the future has no substance to it - I may present some new material I've got, and there are definitely new angles of doing it - but I'm not looking to recreate another Led Zeppelin.
Isolation doesn't bother me at all. It gives me a sense of security.
The benchmark of quality I go for is pretty high.
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'm always looking for the creative spark. Always.
I believe every guitar player inherently has something unique about their playing. They just have to identify what makes them different and develop it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I wasn't into jazz so much - I preferred things raw.
If I pick up a guitar, I don't practise scales. I never have. I come up with something I haven't done before, new approaches to chord sequences, riffs, rhythms, so it becomes composition. It's not like the music I'm doing is just a single thread.
There is no point in putting out 'The Complete BBC Sessions,' and someone's growling that you missed something.
I don't think the critics could understand what we were doing.
I would say New York, Chicago, Memphis, and Los Angeles were my favorites.
I think it was that we were really seasoned musicians. We had serious roots that spanned different cultures, obviously the blues.
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 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 people want to find things, they find them themselves.
Our intent with Led Zeppelin was not to get caught up in the singles' market, but to make albums where you could really flex your muscles - your musical intellect, if you like - and challenge yourself.
From the first album, Led Zeppelin was always going to be a totally new approach from what had gone before - whether it was approaching the blues or folk music like 'Babe I'm Gonna Leave You': nothing existed like that.
The only way to have time is to shut down and then do what you want to do.
I wasn't a very good draughtsman.
I've never mastered the guitar. Either I was playing it, or it was playing me; it depends how you look at it. As a kid, the only things I had to do was go to school, do my homework, and play guitar.
I seem to have tireless energy when I get involved in things, on an almost OCD basis, which is a good way to do things because if you're gonna do something, you'd better make sure you do it well.
The album's not dead for me; I still buy vinyl albums.
I really love playing live - it's such a gas.
I wasn't on 'You Really Got Me,' but I did play on the Kinks' records.
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.
Let me explain something about guitar playing. Everyone's got their own character, and that's the thing that's amazed me about guitar playing since the day I first picked it up. Everyone's approach to what can come out of six strings is different from another person, but it's all valid.
Time sometimes passes quite quickly.
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.
You want that - peers respecting what you're doing.
Every musician wants to do something which will hold up for a long time, and I guess we did it with 'Stairway to Heaven.'
My influences were the riff-based blues coming from Chicago in the Fifties - Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Billy Boy Arnold records.
I always believed in the music we did and that's why it was uncompromising.
But to put out a greatest hits on one CD was totally impossible, I just couldn't do it. The best compromise was to put out two CDs - Early Days - which is what it is - and Latter Days.
Almost the moment he died, they put him in Playboy as one of the greatest drummers, which he was - there's no doubt about it. There's never been anybody since. He's one of the greatest drummers that ever lived.
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.
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.
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.
I really don't listen to Led Zeppelin that much.
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 involved in all things musical. It's all consuming, even if it doesn't necessarily manifest as a record or a concert.
My first guitar was like a campfire guitar. And it was left at a house that my family had moved into... and the guitar was at the house. It was all strung up. It's normally something that would be beyond a bit of rubbish.
Jack White is an extraordinary person because he's like a three-dimensional chess player. He thinks so far ahead.
If I'm going to put my image into something, I'll put my image into something that I actually feel like I'd like to do.