[on John Bonham] We couldn't have carried on without John. We had been working as such an integral, combined unit for so long that to get somebody in to learn those areas of improvisation just wouldn't have been honest to any of us, and certainly not to his name.

[In the mid-60s, living at a former boathouse in Pangbourne, Berkshire]: I lived at that house for a substantial period on my own. And I really enjoyed that bachelor existence - working and creating music, and going to out on my boat at night on my own; switching off the engine and just coasting in the twilight. I liked that.

I have a voracious appetite for all things, worldly and unworldly.

I loved the blues so much that I learnt to play the harmonica - pretty badly, but I did play a few sessions; I did one for Cliff Richard and one for Billy Fury.

[In 2010, looking back on Led Zeppelin's 2007 one-show reunion]: At the time of the run-up and rehearsals towards the show I think we assumed that there were going to be more dates. It would have been nice to have played more concerts. But, even while I was going round doing Christmas shopping people were still coming up and saying: 'Is there a chance of a reunion?' I don't have any real answer, apart from that it doesn't look like it.

[on his own picture on Royal Mail stamps issued in 2010]: It's the most unexpected experience. Having been a kid learning about stamps ... well, it's quite a shock to be honest with you - A pleasant shock! I'm thrilled!

[on offers to write his autobiography]: I've had a lot of offers. The idea of a posthumous book appeals to me . . . When I look back at it it's still in focus. Most of it is clear.

[on LZ IV]: I think every track on it has proved to be an absolute classic. In the rehearsal, Robert Plant was very quiet while he wrote most of the lyrics; then he just let fire!

The point about the music and the album covers was to be something that would be thought-provoking, hopefully on an intellectual or an emotional level. Whatever Mick Wall's written about the hermit [from the LZ IV cover] is probably so off. It doesn't matter. The cover was supposed to be something that was for other people to savour rather than for me to actually spell everything out, which would make the whole thing rather disappointing on that level of your own personal adventure into the music.

The tours took a lot ... well, did it take a lot out of me? I don't know whether it did. It gave as much to me as it took out. It was like being on a permanent adrenalin drip, d'you know what I mean? Playing live, at least, was to be right on the edge of the moment.

[As of 2010, does he still have his stage costumes from the 1970s?] Yes I do. Oh, yeah! Carefully stored. The only thing is I'll never get in 'em again! I think the waist on them is 26in. Absolutely ridiculous!

[on various so-called biographies of Led Zeppelin]: I don't actually read them, I just hear about them from other people. I did see Wall the other day at one of those award ceremonies and I just told him: 'I wanted you to know I'm writing a book on Mick Wall . . .'

The one thing I don't want to do is to try to make it look as though I'm trying to be controversial about what they're doing. Whatever anyone else does is fine. Theirs [Robert Plant and Alison Krauss''s] was a really acclaimed album, and it's really good.

[on recording 'Led Zeppelin IV']: I must say that when you had four musicians that were really without doubt at the top of their game there and they played really superbly as a band and that whole aspect took on a fifth element - this alchemy of it that was really ripe for creation. When you mention 'Four Sticks,' for example, at the time that really sounded quite avant-garde compared with anything else that had gone before it, not from us but from other quarters. We were able to do, collectively, so much. It was a wonderful vehicle to be able to develop.

We were recording another number ['Four Sticks']; we'd just finished a take and John Bonham did the drum intro and we just followed on. I started doing pretty much half of that riff you hear on 'Rock n Roll' and it was just so exciting that we thought, "let's just work on this". The riff and the sequence was really immediate to those 12-bar patterns that you had in those old rock songs like [from] Little Richard, etc, and it was just so spur-of-the-moment the way that it just came together more or less out of nowhere.

[on refusing any labeling on the LZ IV album cover]: It wasn't easy. The record company were sort of insisting that the name go on it. There were eyes looking towards heaven if you like. It was hinted it was professional suicide to go out with an album with no title. The reality of it was that we'd had so many dour reviews to our albums along the way. At the time each came out it was difficult sometimes for the reviewers to come to terms with what was on there, without an immediate point of reference to the previous album. But the ethic of the band was very much summing up where we were collectively at that point in time. An untitled album struck me as the best answer to all the critics - because we knew the way that the music was being received both by sales and attendance at concerts.

What I remember about that 1973 tour is that we arrived in America and we did 53,000 at Atlanta and then 55,000 at the following concert in Tampa, Florida - it was quite clear that if people were going to come along to see us in those kind of numbers we weren't going to have problems doing concerts that would fulfil the demand. It was phenomenal though - the audience reaction was just so with us, y'know.

During a concert that's going to be about three hours long, I was trying to take new angles on the solos. Sometimes those things would be really really terrific and sometimes you'd hit a wrong note on the way and other times you'd make that wrong note actually work 'cos you work around that. But [between us] this whole musical entity locked together and it would just sort of mutate over the course of the evening's concert. Exploring and delving into that, it was just marvellous.

I think what we did on [the CD release] 'How the West was Won' - that 1972 gig - is pretty much a testament of how good it was. It would have been nice to have had a little more visual recordings, but there you go. That's the conundrum of Led Zeppelin!

[on the possibility of new solo work]: It's not like I don't have material. It's just a question of going ahead and doing it. I'd like to try some ambitious projects, that's what it is. It would be very easy just to get together and knock something out with the more accepted format of how, say, my music might be presented. However I can always do that if it comes to it.

At Live Aid (1985), for example, we were all doing our individual things. Robert Plant had his solo career, I was working with Paul Rodgers in the Firm, John Paul Jones was doing his project. We came together in the spirit of Live Aid (1985) and we could only rehearse actually at the venue, more or less; we had about half an hour's rehearsal and it just clearly wasn't good enough. The 1988 [Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary: It's Only Rock 'n' Roll (1988)] reunion wasn't far short of the same sort of ingredients."So if we were going to do the run-up to the O2 we needed to feel confident in our playing. We played really, really well. But we played with a totally different urgency, if you like, from how we played in the rehearsals - although the rehearsals were pretty damn good, too. I suppose in retrospect the fact there was only one gig then it's great that everyone afterwards would say that it was an historic and inspiring gig for people to hear."It is a shame that there weren't any more that followed on and now we got to two years later and everyone's doing their own thing and that's how that is at this point of time or certainly into next year. So that's it.

Every musician wants to do something which will hold up for a long time, and I guess we did it with 'Stairway to Heaven.'

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.

Live Aid (1985) was pretty shambolic. We came together and rehearsed with a drummer we'd never met before and then we were joined by Phil Collins, who we'd never played with before, on this great Live Aid (1985) stage. We went there with the spirit of it, but actually it was pretty shambolic.

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

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.

My finger picking is sort of a cross between Pete Seeger, Earl Scruggs, and total incompetence.