"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.

"

"Last year I arrived in San Diego at the beginning of a tour, where I was playing the Thick As A Brick material. I ambled down to the theatre in the morning having arrived the night before, where the theatre manager said there was a note for me in my dressing room, left behind by Alfie Boe who they’d had a couple of nights before. I recognised Alfie Boe as a hotshot, super popular opera star who played at the Queen’s Jubilee Concert in Hyde Park. They crop up from time to time, these people who cross over from a more insulated music into wider popular culture, and Alfie Boe has certainly done that in the last couple of years with opera music. You might think he’s just another of the usual not-quite-authentic people who just find themselves singing the odd aria at working men’s clubs, and getting a record deal and a ton of money. But Alfie did his apprenticeship by studying at the Royal Academy of Music, worked with the D’Oyly Carte Opera and spent ten years of his life learning his craft. And he was a man born with enormous natural talent. Rather like Lou Gramm he has this very assured level of control – he knows what he can do. I read his note to me, wishing me a good show and leaving me a phone number. So a few weeks later in England I called Alfie and we had a few chats on the phone, and though we haven’t met we were due on two occasions to have lunch, but he had to cancel because of his mother’s illness. But I hope I do get to meet Alfie because I think he’s a very fine singer. I understand that while his desire is not to leave classical music, he wants to demonstrate he’s got the cojones of a Tom Jones or a Robert Plant or whoever - he wants to be a rock and roll singer. Far be it for me to say that might be mistake, you’ve got to give it a go. So Alfie’s branching out into rather middle-of-the-road pop and rock at the moment. As a classical singer, I think he has the gravitas and vocal expertise, perhaps more vocal expertise, than Pavarotti at his relatively young best. If you listen to Alfie’s ‘Nessun Dorma’, I think you’ll hear something that is sung with enormous technical ability, control, authority and with the right amount of gravitas, it has a weight to it that I think is really great. I hope he doesn’t sell himself short in the realm of middle-of-the-road pop music."