I like change and I like contrast.

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. ... 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. ... I always believed in the music we did and that's why it was uncompromising. ... I don't think the critics could understand what we were doing.

Domesticity and all that isn't really for me.

Once I get onstage the tension explodes and I'm fine. I'm in another world - in a trance almost, doing what I love best, expressing myself through guitar.

Led Zeppelin didn't get that kind of Beatles screaming. We had a more sort of macho crowd. But I remember once in the early days of The Yardbirds, we were playing on an ice rink, and the stage was mobbed by screaming girls. I had my clothes torn off me. That's a really uncomfortable experience, let me tell you.

You can't buy time. Everything, for me, seems to be a race against time. Especially musically.

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.