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.

I spend a lot of time near water.

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.

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.

I believe every guitar player inherently has something unique about their playing. They just have to identify what makes them different and develop it.

You can't expect to be the same person you were three years ago. Some people expect you to be and can't come to terms with the fact that if a year has elapsed between LPs, that means one year's worth of changes. The material consequently is affected by that, the lyrics are affected by that... the music too.

Everything that came later... the roots are all there in the first album.