I was excited about opening for Vanilla Fudge because I was a big fan of theirs.
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.
I liked the Sex Pistols' music. I thought it was superb.
Certainly, as a guitarist, I was aware of descending chromatic lines and arpeggios long before 1968.
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.
I consider descending chromatic lines and arpeggiated chords basic skills learned by any student of the guitar.
I'm not trying to be flippant here, but I just play the guitar, don't I? That is my characteristic, and it's my identity as you hear it.
Jack White is an extraordinary person because he's like a three-dimensional chess player. He thinks so far ahead.
It was an extraordinary connection, the synergy within the band. There was an area of ESP between Robert Plant, John Paul Jones, John Bonham, and myself.
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.
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.
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.
The Yardbirds folded in 1968, and within a handful of months, Led Zeppelin was not only a band but also a very successful one.
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.
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.
My influences were the riff-based blues coming from Chicago in the Fifties - Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Billy Boy Arnold records.
I do not recall ever seeing Spirit perform live.
Right from the first time we went to America in 1968, Led Zeppelin was a word-of-mouth thing. You can't really compare it to how it is today.
That's one of the problems with the Zeppelin stuff. It sounds ridiculous on MP3. You can't hear what's there properly.
Zeppelin vinyl is quite revered in audiophile circles.
