Jimmy Page Quotes
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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.
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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.
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You can't just find yourself doing something and not happy doing it.
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I'm not a guitarist as far as a technician goes, I just pick it up and play it. Technique doesn't come into it.
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We kept moving forward and didn't try to recreate the past .. the approach to each album was radically different every time. Many bands would have some success and, because they were locked into having a single - something we didn't have to worry about - they had to make sure there was something similar on the next album ... that was never the idea with Led Zeppelin .. the goal was to keep that spark of spontaneity at all times.
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We went in and recorded exactly where we were at that point in time. I think because of the quality of musicianship of the band has given it the longevity. I thought the music would endure, I didn't think I would ... I always thought I'd be dead by 30, then dead by 40 and on and on. Now I'm 55 so I didn't even die at 50.
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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.
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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.
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I can communicate far better on a guitar than I can through my mouth.
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I know where I'm going musically. I can see my pattern and I'm going much slower than I thought I'd be going.
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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.
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The beauty of the band was you never knew what was going to come out next.
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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.
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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.
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You absorb so much from whatever your environment is, as an artist, and you learn to take from it what can help you create.
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I'm over 30 now, but I didn't expect to be here.
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So far I've been very, very fortunate because it appears that people like to hear the music I like to play. What more fortunate position can a musician be in?
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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.
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I'm very fortunate because I love what I'm doing.
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I remember one particular occasion when I hadn't played a solo for, quite literally, a couple of months. And I was asked to play a solo on a rock & roll thing. I played it and felt that what I'd done was absolute crap. I was so disgusted with myself that I made my mind up that I had to get out of it. It was messing me right up.
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I bet you can't play slide piano.
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My finger picking is sort of a cross between Pete Seeger, Earl Scruggs, and total incompetence.
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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.
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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.
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Once I got a guitar that was relatively user-friendly, but not super-duper easy, I really came on as a guitarist, at that point. It helped. It was a super-expensive guitar either, but something needs to steer you a bit, if you're playing an instrument that is really hard.
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You get as much out of rock & roll artistically as you put into it. There's nobody who can teach you. You're on your own and that's what I find so fascinating about it.
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I'm obsessed - not just interested, obsessed - with folk music, street music, the parallels between a country's street music and its so-called classical and intellectual music, the way certain scales have travelled right across the globe. All this ethnological and musical interaction fascinates me. Have you heard any trance music? That's the thing.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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