In the wake of the San Francisco scene, ears were alive. It was a listening generation.

I wasn't on 'You Really Got Me,' but I did play on the Kinks' records.

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.

I've played guitar in so many different styles, and I want to revisit them all.

The album's not dead for me; I still buy vinyl albums.

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.

You shouldn't really have to use EQ in the studio if the instruments sound good. It should all be done with microphones and microphone placement.

My guitar playing touches so many different areas of the form, but the important thing is what it represents across the form.

The Stones are great and always have been. Jagger's lyrics are just amazing. Right on the ball every time.

The fourth album encapsulated some remarkable music that was really groundbreaking. We were able to have something like 'When the Levee Breaks,' which, sonically, was very menacing. But then you had the flip side: something like 'Going to California,' which is really intimate.

It's good to be in a position to know that I've inspired musicians, from what I've learned to lay down personally, and collectively with Led Zeppelin.

I don't think the critics could understand what we were doing.

The benchmark of quality I go for is pretty high.

I'm not a guitar hero.

Because Led Zeppelin weren't having to worry about doing singles, each time we went in to record, it was a body of work for an album. So you could get the shift and the movement forwards as opposed to having to be rooted back to a single that might have been done a year ago.

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.

You want that - peers respecting what you're doing.

There's such a currency to Led Zeppelin, or the members of Led Zeppelin. If I put it to you this way, on the run-up to the O2 concert, the only music that we played was music of Led Zeppelin - the past catalog stuff; that's what we played on the way towards shaping up the set list for that. But we played really, really well.

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.

Traveling the world was a constant thing, rich with experiences. But all of it was relative to being able to play live onstage and really stretch out.

Jack White is an extraordinary person because he's like a three-dimensional chess player. He thinks so far ahead.

I liked the Sex Pistols' music. I thought it was superb.

I wasn't into jazz so much - I preferred things raw.

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.