Top 75 Jimmy Page Quotes

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

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.

Because we spent so much time in the States in the beginning, we weren’t able to do so much in England. It was slower catching up. And we didn’t have radio here like what was called underground radio over there. So we got these little slots on the BBC.

How many guitars do I have? I don’t know. I don’t know! But I think the answer to it is, more than I can play at any one point in time. Even though I do have double necks, so I can try and play more than at one time!

I seem to have tireless energy when I get involved in things, on an almost OCD basis, which is a good way to do things because if you’re gonna do something, you’d better make sure you do it well.

I love playing. If it was down to just that, it would be utopia. But it’s not. It’s airplanes, hotel rooms, limousines, and armed guards standing outside rooms. I don’t get off on that part of it at all.

If people want to find things, they find them themselves.

If you listen to our work, from ‘Led Zeppelin I’ to ‘Coda,’ it’s just a fantastic textbook.

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.

I really don’t listen to Led Zeppelin that much.

In the 1960s and into the ’70s, everyone in their own way was trying to open up the musical horizon. There shouldn’t be a wall that you’re going toward and bouncing off.

I think it was that we were really seasoned musicians. We had serious roots that spanned different cultures, obviously the blues.

I wasn’t into jazz so much – I preferred things raw.

I was always good at hearing complete arrangements in my head.

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.

I’m always looking for the creative spark. Always.

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

If I’m going to put my image into something, I’ll put my image into something that I actually feel like I’d like to do.

But to put out a greatest hits on one CD was totally impossible, I just couldn’t do it. The best compromise was to put out two CDs – Early Days – which is what it is – and Latter Days.

In the Led Zeppelin shows of the Sixties and Seventies, it was the same numbers every night, but they were constantly in a state of flux. If I played something good, really substantial, I’d stick it in again.

Every album that I’ve attempted, I suppose, has been different – it’s bound to be.

I am very good at remembering music and am absolutely certain that I never heard ‘Taurus’ until 2014.

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

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.

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.

From meeting Robert Plant, John Bonham, and John Paul Jones, teaming up, rehearsing, playing selected gigs outside of Britain, coming back into Olympic Studios to record the first album, and then going to America, which we crack open like a nut with the debut record – all that happened, literally, within months.

I really love playing live – it’s such a gas.

The thing about Led Zeppelin was that it was always four musicians at the top of their game, but they could play like a band.

I played guitar all my life, all the way through the Yardbirds, but I knew that for me, this was going to be a guitar vehicle, because that’s what I wanted it to be. There is no way I would play guitar like a tour de force like I did in Led Zeppelin.

Almost the moment he died, they put him in Playboy as one of the greatest drummers, which he was – there’s no doubt about it. There’s never been anybody since. He’s one of the greatest drummers that ever lived.

The instruments that bleed into each other are what creates the ambience. Once you start cleaning everything up, you lose it. You lose that sort of halo that bleeding creates. Then if you eliminate the halo, you have to go back and put in some artificial reverb, which is never as good.

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

There is no point in putting out ‘The Complete BBC Sessions,’ and someone’s growling that you missed something.

I’m not a guitar hero.

I’m just looking for an angel with a broken wing.

Led Zeppelin wasn’t a corporate entity.

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

I play like I play. You hear it on ‘Celebration Day.’ It’s pretty good for a one-night shot.

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

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.

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

‘Boogie Chillen’,’ by John Lee Hooker – that is a riff.

I’m pretty loyal to my guitars, you know, but then they’re pretty loyal to me, too.

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.

The benchmark of quality I go for is pretty high.

The passing of John Bonham… Let’s just put it… Before we say, ‘the passing of John Bonham,’ the introduction of John Bonham on the first album and ‘Good Times Bad Times,’ it changes drumming overnight.

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.

If you write a written book, you’re gonna get slowed up by lawyers wanting to see what you say about this person, that person – I couldn’t be bothered with it.

Certainly, as a guitarist, I was aware of descending chromatic lines and arpeggios long before 1968.

That’s one of the problems with the Zeppelin stuff. It sounds ridiculous on MP3. You can’t hear what’s there properly.

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.

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.

I can play in many sorts of categories because we’ve seen that with Led Zeppelin, all the acoustic stuff, and this, that and the other.

We were lucky in the days of Led Zeppelin. Each album was different. We didn’t have to continue a formula or produce a certain number of singles. Because, in those days, radio was still playing albums. That was really good.

I always want to do my very best, and it’s frustrating to have something hold me back.

I prefer to hear an artist’s work and what they can do, so as far as I’m concerned, I’d get a lot more out of a collection of songs to be able to understand what the musician is doing.

Here’s where it goes with Led Zeppelin. It didn’t matter what was going on around us, because the character of Led Zeppelin’s music was so strong.

I have one of those gravel-y voices with no range to it.

I do not recall ever seeing Spirit perform live.

You want that – peers respecting what you’re doing.

My influences were the riff-based blues coming from Chicago in the Fifties – Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and Billy Boy Arnold records.

With Led Zeppelin, it has always been that mystique of how the music is done – how it works, why it works.

I wasn’t a very good draughtsman.

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.

I always believed in the music we did and that’s why it was uncompromising.

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.

We weren’t making money in the Yardbirds.

The whole thing about ‘The Rover’ is the whole swagger of it, the whole guitar attitude swagger. I’m afraid I’ve got to say it, but it’s the sort of thing that is so apparent when you hear ‘Rumble’ by Link Wray – it’s just total attitude, isn’t it?