"Robert Plant has a horrible attempt at a wail at the beginning. He doesn’t get anywhere near it, but it’s still awesome. In a way, live stuff is about the mistakes. You don’t want a note-perfect recital of a song, you want a fucked up, exciting, bum notes everywhere, people falling off their stools version of it. And I think Led Zeppelin are brilliant at that kind of stuff. Everything on this is completely real and it sounds like they’re really trying and not quite getting there – and that’s the thrill. That’s what it’s all about. The white knuckle ride. We didn’t sign up for the teacup ride. It’s real life – there’s a human element to it, and you really get that on Led Zeppelin recordings."

"That said, I love the more ancient sides of British culture as well. This reminds of a really broody, Autumnal day years ago – when there was all this low, grey cloud – when I decided I was going to go to the Avebury Stone Circle. When I was first there, it was deserted and perfect. 

A little while later, I heard a break in the quietness –someone else had arrived. Then I heard these big footsteps, and Robert Plant – Robert Plant appeared from behind a stone! It was an absolutely perfect moment.

I was too shy to say anything, of course, but when I was leaving, there he was at the car park, and, argh, his car was next to mine. I got into the driver's seat, I caught his eye, so I wound down the window…and I just couldn't think what to say, so I just grinned and gave him a big thumbs-up! We've met properly since, but whenever I think of Led Zeppelin, I think of him emerging from the mists like a druid.

I also didn't hear this until I was 27, and then I was all, oh, no wonder they're so popular, this is fantastic! Music was tribal to me when I was a teenager. I was a real indie kid who didn't listen to rock at all. Now I listen to it often, and I think of the house where they made this album, the other side of the mountains to where I live, and it really feels like this music comes from this very old, rooted place. And 'The Battle Of Evermore', with Sandy Denny's voice – I love how the whole of the end-of-the-60s British folk moment is caught up in the way she sings. I love the way those traditions connect us to something deeper.

"

"You have to remember that this came out when I was 10 years old, and my brothers started smoking pot and listening to that all the time. So we lived a lot of our young intense lives with all that cool Led Zeppelin shit playing. But when I hear Led Zeppelin IV, I guess that's where I discovered that idea of a rock group. So for me, Led Zeppelin never really evokes anything other than these dudes playing this bad ass music. Of course, it's impossible to really play like Led Zeppelin. I mean, they're a total fabrication of sounds and moods and little arranging techniques, little quirks. Jimmy Page is a master of that. It's a magical combination of, what, eight songs? When you listen to them altogether, which we do quite often, I don't see how anyone who loves music could listen to that and not think, 'Fuck, that's cool'. Such cool drumming, such cool effects on the guitars. Robert Plant... it's a weird way he sings. People have accepted it now, but it's a weird screech. So high, with so much velocity, he's really singing at the peak of his energy. That is driving the music. You can't take Robert Plant's screeching out of that and get the same effect. It's just what the song is. That song 'Rock N Roll' [sings] "been a long time since I rock 'n rolled"... if you don't sing it like that, it doesn't have the same effect. He screams that shit with that freaky echo on his voice, it's like some truth from beyond. It's fucking amazing. It's still amazing."

"Led Zeppelin, goddamn! I don't think they made a bad record! There's that classic line from Cameron Crowe's movie Fast Times At Ridgemont High where they're cruising around, talking about how to get chicks. And the guy says: ""If you wanna score with a chick, turn out side two of volume four!"" I've used that a few times actually. It works [laughs]! Anyway if it didn't work, it was a nice soundtrack while it was going down. Jimmy Page is another guitar player that means a lot to me. Every member of that fucking band: John Paul Jones was an amazing writer, arranger and producer, as well as Jimmy. Plus John Bonham and Robert Plant... that's one of the greatest rock & roll bands of all times. It's just straight-up, fucking sexy, kick ass and shit, man! All the way from dirty low-down rock & roll to the biggest orchestral tracks like ‘Kashmir’. They travelled a lot of ground while keeping their roots intact, the blues. You know, certain bands really resonate in certain areas and that was one band that was always popular up there where I come from, the Northwest. You have at least ten fucking Zeppelin songs that you can jam with anybody at any time."

"Probably one of the first bands that I learned how to play was Led Zeppelin. As I got more and more into them, Jimmy Page increasingly became a hero of my mine to the point that he's by far my biggest hero. If you listened to those records, and you were able to isolate all the guitar tracks, you'd probably say, "Wow, this track sounds awful. Wow, that track sounds awful too." Not the performance, but the tone of it. But he was such a master at what he did, they were able to blend those things and give it such a unique sound. Simple, simple things like the sound of a Fender Rhodes in 'Misty Mountain Hop' – the way that they worked all those things together. When you think Fender Rhodes, for me at least, you don't think heavy rock. You think Hall & Oates. But Led Zeppelin IV was one of those records that completely blew my paradigm apart regarding what rock music could be. And then from that point I went backwards in their catalogue. To this day Robert [Plant] and Jimmy are the consummate pair of frontman/guitar hero. My playing style is probably more similar to Jimmy's than anyone else's. I was influenced by people like Michael Schenker and Uli Jon Roth but Uli was always a bit too exotic. Jimmy is at the absolute top."

"You can't fail today to be mesmerised by 'Whole Lotta Love'. That was the song that did it for me. A lot of these choices that I've made are either the first or second release from these bands. I always thought that those were great times, because there was never any pressure around artists. You don't have all of the extras that come with being successful. The band is in a very pure place at that point. I always remember playing with them, but it was quite a while after this album came out. We'd just completed a very, very long and gruelling American tour. We were about to fly back to the UK and we had a call from Robert Plant saying, ""I heard you guys are still over in the States, would you like to come and hang out and open for Zeppelin on the Green ['Day On the Green' concert] in Oakland?"" So we got a really cheap, unglamorous motel by the side of the freeway. It was so poor that the walls were basically green, covered with algae. We were there for a week and just waiting and waiting and waiting for the chance to open up for Zeppelin. That was a very important show for Priest, because that was what broke us on the west coast of America."

"So he started off as an indie guy. 'Loser' was just a song he released on an indie label, but it caught fire. MTV picked it, blah blah blah. And it was later put on a proper album on Geffen. He is an eclectic artist and a Scientologist to boot. The irony is that Beck's father [David Campbell] actually arranged the symphony orchestra that backed us up at the Melbourne stadium when we played there. Mellow Gold has got this eclectic sense to it in terms of, like, he uses drum loops, which I hate, but it sounds cool to me! He uses different kinds of instruments and seems to play them all, and the songwriting is all over the place. But at the core of it, what he doesn't do that other singers do is show off. He just gets the personality going and sings the song. So when you think of Brian Johnson and Robert Plant and Paul Rodgers, they're showing off with their vocals, singing way up on the high end of their range. I don't care if it's Steven Tyler or anybody else, you show off! Beck doesn't show off. He's just midrange or low-down. His attitude comes not from what he does vocally but it's laid back, kind of matter-of-fact, as if he's just thinking to himself. It's a unique thing. In that way, even though it doesn't have a wall of guitars or any of that, it's very rock. That sensibility he's got, although I'm sure he would consider himself an indie artist, but his sensibility is very rock."