Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
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.
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 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.
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.
There's so much that can be done on the guitar. And that's what is so good about the guitar - everyone can really enjoy themselves on it and have a good time, which is what it's all about.
From the classical guitar right through to the furthest electrical experiments and everything in-between, it's amazing what the guitar can actually do. I mean, when one thinks about sounds.
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.
I do not worship the devil. But magic does intrigue me. Magic of all kinds. I bought Crowley's house to go up and write in. The thing is, I just never get up that way. Friends live there now.
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.
My guitar style was developed during that 10-year period. That's me. That's the way I play, and I don't wish to play any other way. Our own individual identities are firmly stamped on this album.
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 one person who's disappeared out of the business is the A&R man. Because the listener at home becomes the A&R man. He's the one who chooses what tracks he wants on the album. And that's cool.
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.
There's music that can affect people in their lives, and they will always relate to the point that they heard it and experienced it, either if you're playing it or you're receptive, as an audience.
You can't overthink the music. Mood and intensity can't be manufactured. The blues isn't about structure; it's what you bring to it. The spontaneity of capturing a specific moment is what drives it.
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.
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.
I can understand why we got bad reviews. We went right over people's heads. One album would follow another and would have nothing to do with what we'd done before. People didn't know what was going on.
I love playing. If it was down to just that, it would be utopia. But it's not. It's airplanes, hotel rooms, limousines, and armed guards standing outside rooms. I don't get off on that part of it at all.
I wanted to emulate music from America - young punks playing rock n' roll is what it was. I read part of Keith Richards' autobiography, and it was totally parallel with me, learning from American records.
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.
There's so many different styles and facets of the 360-degree musical sphere to listen to. From tribal to classical music, it's all there. If the bottom was to sag out of that, for God's sake, help us all.
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'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.
In the Led Zeppelin shows of the Sixties and Seventies, it was the same numbers every night, but they were constantly in a state of flux. If I played something good, really substantial, I'd stick it in again.
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.
Because somebody plays guitar, why does it mean they need a singer? Because people already have this image of things? No, I'll put my music together, then think about whether I need to embellish it with a singer.
How many guitars do I have? I don't know. I don't know! But I think the answer to it is, more than I can play at any one point in time. Even though I do have double necks, so I can try and play more than at one time!
The Yardbirds sort of disbanded, and I was disappointed because I thought what we were doing was really good. I thought we were really onto something. I thought I was really onto something with these ideas that I had.
Having the facility to have this multitrack at home, I could try experiments with sort of all of the instruments, giving them different treatments so they didn't actually sound, necessarily, like the instrument itself.
There's such a wealth of arts and styles within the guitar... flamenco, jazz, rock, blues... you name it, it's there. In the early days my dream was to fuse all those styles. Now composing has become just as important.
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.
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.
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.
Playing in my early bands, working as a studio musician, producing and going to art school was, in retrospect, my apprenticeship. I was learning and creating a solid foundation of ideas, but I wasn't really playing music.
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.
Let's just say I'm like a ship passing through storms, resting in ports now and then until it's time to continue the journey. I once told a friend, `I'm just looking for an angel with a broken wing - one that couldn't fly away.'
If you wanted to chart new territories and head off over the horizon, you had to make sure you weren't overly influenced by what others were doing ... so it didn't matter what other bands were doing ... we did what we were doing.
The guitar to me, from the classical/gut-string guitar right through to Hendrix, et cetera, has all the range [of sound]. Within those six strings it is incredible what one can get sound-wise. It's just down to imagination, really.
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.
You never knew what was going to happen in concert. It was a really exciting prospect to go onstage, and you can hear that in the live recordings ... wherever we were and whatever year it was, we always went onstage determined to do our best.
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.
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.
I don't like to tell people what format they can get things in, or say, "I'm only going to release this on vinyl and nothing else. You have to come to my world." I don't like to say that to people either. But, I do think there's a loss of romance.
The whole thing about 'The Rover' is the whole swagger of it, the whole guitar attitude swagger. I'm afraid I've got to say it, but it's the sort of thing that is so apparent when you hear 'Rumble' by Link Wray - it's just total attitude, isn't it?
When I was still in the Yardbirds, our producer, Mickie Most, would always try to get us to record all these horrible songs. During one session, we recorded 'Ten Little Indians,' an extremely silly song that featured a truly awful brass arrangement.
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. There is no way I would play guitar like a tour de force like I did in Led Zeppelin.
Because we spent so much time in the States in the beginning, we weren't able to do so much in England. It was slower catching up. And we didn't have radio here like what was called underground radio over there. So we got these little slots on the BBC.
The re-releases have more than doubled the amount of Led Zeppelin work out there. I wanted it done authoritatively, 'cause I was the one writing the stuff; I was the producer and mixer. I don't think it's any more weird than writing your autobiography.
There is no way I would play guitar like a tour de force like I did in Led Zeppelin. John Bonham, phenomenal drummer, young man with his technique, but do you think he would ever have the opportunity to play like that in another band? Of course he hadn't.