Robert plant quotes

The past is a stepping stone, not a millstone.

I’m pleased with how ridiculous I am. I like me. Though I’m not a huge fan. I know when to switch me off.

People have got to let their bodies breathe a little bit more. That's the great thing about being a pompous, jumped-up rock god. There's plenty of air around you.

Kashmir is my last resort. I think, if I truly deserve it one day, I should go there and stay there for quite a while. Or if I really need it at any point, it should be my haven, my Shangri-la.

The essence of Bonham is what he didn't play rather than what he did play - what he left out.

Lately, I'm spending more and more time working with non-rock musicians and leaving the mainstream - almost dissolving into another world, musically.

Each album comes from definitely a different period in the evolution of each of us individually as creators and the role that we take in life. The external stimuli changed... so the songs are full of lots of different meanings.

I think we're in a disposable world and 'Stairway to Heaven' is one of the things that hasn't quite been thrown away yet.

My mother was a gypsy, and she had a lot of dark blood in her, and her hair was very, very thick - she couldn't even get a brush through it. So I have been very fortunate. And every time I go to cut it off, hairdressers refuse to do it.

[Elvis] Presley was definitely a great inspiration to every guy who ever had a hard-on in the whole of the Western world, I should think. He shook everybody well and true, and we just kept on shakin'. But he started it.

Everybody's got something to tell you. And most people have told me to do the obvious thing as far as my career goes. Which would have sent me tottering into the abyss.

Being good isn't just about being dextrous and being flash. Being good is about being an all-round contributor in the great world of music.

When I was a kid, the world was such a big place, and I had no idea that I would be afforded these great moments in between doing what I love to do. I'm able to actually choose places to go which have intrigued me for the last god knows how many years, and Tasmania's always been one of those places. I see it all and yet I see so little because it's so fast.

The calendar and the mirror - they're bastards.

To rock isn't necessarily to cavort.

The way I see it, rock n' roll is folk music.

Led Zeppelin was a very sensitive and beautiful animal beast.

Don't be hard on yourself. And take as many chances, risks, as you can. You've got to be out there adventuring with the voice. Because if you're just a singer for the sake of it, it's not quite enough.

My sort of stability as a character, it's never been one of my strongest attributes. I'm a bit of a clusterf*ck. I get so many great ideas that I kind of mesmerize people with another plan before the previous plan is hatched out.

Does anyone remember laughter?

I have to try and change the landscape, whatever it is.

I don't see what the point is in growing up.

There's not a lot of towns that I can go to and take family - too many incongruous knocks on doors - "Hello, honey. Have you missed me?"

I know that bands that haven't put out a record for 10 years are playing to 20,000 people a night. But that's not the achievement.

You would find in a lot of Zep stuff that the riff was the juggernaut that careered through and I worked the lyrics around this.

It's sort of a feeling of power onstage. It's really the ability to make people smile, or just to turn them one way or another for that duration of time, and for it to have some effect later on. I don't really think it's power... it's the goodness.

Well, when I was a kid I used to hide behind the curtains at home at Christmas and I used to try and be Elvis. There was a certain ambience between the curtains and the French windows, there was a certain sound there for a ten year old. That was all the ambience I got at ten years old... I think! And I always wanted to be a certain, a bit similar to that. But I didn't want to sell pizza.

I'm not saving lives. I'm singing and I should go placidly and joyously through the whole thing and work hard and not take it for granted. It's great to have this gift.

I love the feeling of letting fly, of pushing as far as I could go with my voice. The only way you can really graduate how you do it is by doing it regularly to people who don't have to be super impressed. You can do it in the studio all day long but you don't get the flashback that you get onstage.

All I can say is that it's amazing what you can accomplish when you're young and foolish.

The whole idea of music, from the beginning of time, was for people to be happy

I use the music almost as a compass in some kind of quasi-romantic way. I try and go to places that I'm intrigued by, and I take this music with me, using my name at the front.

Back in my day, we called it rock 'n' roll, but then we always reminded listeners that it was no big deal if they didn't like it.

It's a shame to see these young chicks bungle their lives away in a flurry and rush to compete with what was in the old days the goodtime relationships we had with the GTOs and people like that. When it came to looning, they could give us as much of a looning as we could give them. It's a shame, really.

Little drops of rain Whisper of the pain Tears of love Lost in the days gone by.

Life isn't moving quickly - time moves very quickly.

There's still time to change the road you're on...

You know, people can't fall in love with me just because I'm good at what I do.

(`Stairway to Heaven' is) a nice pleasant, well-meaning naive little song, very English. It's not the definitive Led Zeppelin song. `Kashmir' is.

The essence of my lyrics is the desire for peace and harmony. That's all anyone has ever wanted. How could it become outdated?...We are trying to communicate a fulfilled ideal...I am a reflection of what I sing. Sometimes I have to get serious because the things I've been through are serious...The way I see it, rock n' roll is folk music.

Finding another way to do what I know I can do pretty well. A way that stimulates me. I'm always on some sort of learning curve. If I can continually be surprised then I'm alert.

The trouble is now, with rock'n'roll and stuff, it gets so big that it loses what once upon a time was a magnificent thing, where it was special and quite elusive and occasionally a little sinister and it had its own world nobody could get in.

Ten minutes in the music scene is the equal of one hundred years outside of it.

You have nothing. One should never allow themselves to think that they have, one can just touch - to have is to lack appreciation, to touch is to want to touch again.

I can find my way from 500 A.D. through to 1066 pretty well as an amateur historian.

There's so many parts of your life, you know? People say that you don't get any better after the age of about forty or something like that, as a performer. I find all that to be a misconception. I don't feel bad about the way I present stuff. The calendar and the mirror - they're bastards.

It's a two-dimensional gig being a singer, and you can get lost in your own tedium and repetition.

I was young - I was 20 years old. Now I have the gift of perspective and I feel pretty good about it.

The 50s were great because I collected stamps.

I'm just lucky because my kids are grown-up - I love them, very proud of them, and we are in close contact as big-time friends, but they don't need me that much now and I can actually enjoy this wonderful world of music.

I hate cliché. And when you're a rock singer in 1966, or whatever it was, psychedelic blues, through to the '70s, which we know all about, and the '80s, which was a scramble to hang on in, and the '90s, which was a great time for experimentation... and I'm really still excited. The huge vast diagonals within the music that I've been involved with.

I think Led Zeppelin must have worn some of the most peculiar clothing that men had ever been seen to wear without cracking a smile.

Each album has a different atmosphere. The third album and Houses of the Holy seem to be the two albums that people didn't get off on quite as strongly as the other ones. But I think they contain the basic ingredients for the further pursuance of what we're doing... the turning point to relieve the tedium of repetition.

When you're singing we all phrase each other in the most remarkable ways. I might hit some sort of thing I've never done before - some vocal pattern. Bonzo will pick it up - he'll phrase with me instantly and then Pagey may join in or start some other phrase - it's like a quadrant.

I don't want to scream 'Immigrant Song' every night for the rest of my life, and I'm not sure I could.

I'm not a sad old hippie - I'm a joyous old hippie.

How much do people really want to learn? I mean, some people get into a groove and they stay with it indefinitely. And what starts off as a great moment of explosive passion can end up as cabaret 25, 30 years later. It just depends on whether you go and find the right habitat to extend yourself.

It's amazing, it's pumping, it's furious, it's anxious, it's happy and it's far more real than anything you'll ever experience in a Western city. Morocco is a living, pulsating entity which is rapidly changing all the time but there are parts of Marrakesh that carry on as they have done for a thousands years. The music is a reflection of that, of all times and all religions and of all the natural expectations and conditions of the people who live there.

Six months go by very quickly when you're a genius.

Music is for every single person that walks the planet.

My vocal style I haven't tried to copy from anyone. It just developed until it became the girlish whine it is today.

I've lived a life which has been pretty much full up with ambition, ideas, stimulus, creativity, some negativity which I try and avoid.

I'm a grandfather now.

I'll just carry on being a dated flower child.

As we wind on down the road, our shadows taller than our souls.

I don't know how much more expressive you can get than being a rock and roll singer.

I absolutely adore and idolise women. All women. I think they are all amazing. The female musicians I've met have been far more inspiring than the male ones. Women tend to be much more creative and ambitious. I think I may have been a woman in a past life.

I can't regret until the end. And I won't regret then, either.

Soon, I'm going to need help crossing the street.

It's OK to quote from your past. But I'm more interested in quoting from my present and pointing towards the future.

Come into my life, here where nothing matters. Come into my life, roll away the gloom.

No, I've never thought that I was gay. And that's not something you think. It's something you know.

There's so much of this beautiful planet that is still actually spectacular and stimulating. There are so many amazing people that you meet along the way.

Austin - it's a stimulating center. In this conversation, the very first two questions were talking about my kind of wanderlust and my adventures. Some people at my time in life travel forever. I don't know whether it's the British or the Australians - whoever it is, you can kind of stagger into some sort of far-off bastion in the middle of nowhere, and you'll find someone from Britain or someone from Australia or maybe an American.

Theatres are built because they were the boards for entertainment.

It's part of me to get off on those moments where... well, what people would call attention. Obviously, that isn't the be-all and end-all of life, but at the states of creativity that I've reached, well, it helps the lyrics along a little bit.

I want to play tennis and fornicate.

How can you consider flower power outdated? The essence of my lyrics is the desire for peace and harmony. That's all anyone has ever wanted. How could it become outdated?

I realized what Led Zeppelin was about around the end of our first U.S. tour. We started off not even on the bill in Denver, and by the time we got to New York we were second to Iron Butterfly, and they didn't want to go on!

Who wants to see 3 aging old racists on stage, anyway?

The idea of actually taking sharp turns left and right has always intrigued me, but I've never really been bold enough to do that. As musicians go, I've allowed myself to be carried by other people's enthusiasm into places where I've learned a lot. There is no real tumult anymore. What I want to do, I do! I'm pretty fortunate.

Every place is determined by the characters who are there.

What I lack in style and craft, I can make up for in joy and enthusiasm. I like to be around people who are at ease so I like to think the 25-year-old would find me quite an easy-going late-middle-aged hippie.

There's nothing new under the sun - you just get a can of paint out.

Led Zeppelin has been there through three generations of teenage angst. And there's a generation of kids now who won't know it, post-Linkin Park.

Well, once you get the groove of your life and you sort out the aspects of your life that you prefer, and you’ve performed all your responsibilities as a father and as a partner. And just discovery and the great adventure of having eyes wide open. There’s so much of this beautiful planet that is still actually spectacular and stimulating. There are so many amazing people that you meet along the way. By using my career as the wind in the sails of my adventures, I could see so many things and so many people that I might have missed had my career gone a different direction.

I couldn't imagine anything more horrifying than three middle aged men trying to pretend that 'Black Dog' is still significant. It's inappropriate.

I think I'm prone to panic.

I like the idea of being alone. I like the idea of often being alone in all aspects of my life. I like to feel lonely. I like to need things.

If I didn't do what I do, I wouldn't be as young as I am.

I've still got a twinkle in me.

There's no point stepping up to the golden platform if you're going to repeat yourself.

People say that I'm a millionaire, but that's not true - I only spend millions.

There's a similarity between European and North African folk musics.

I'd break out in hives if I had to sing (`Stairway to Heaven') in every show. I wrote those lyrics and found that song to be of some importance and consequence in 1971, but 17 years later, I don't know. It's just not for me. I sang it at the Atlantic Records show because I'm an old softie and it was my way of saying thank you to Atlantic because I've been with them for 20 years. But no more of `Stairway to Heaven' for me.

Look, Salvador Dali did not paint because he needed the money. No conversation about materialism and music makes sense. You make music and that's that, it doesn't matter why.

I think I could sing and shear a few sheep at the same time.

There have been people I've warmed to over the years but, as the situation I'm in is so fleeting and transient, I've always known it's going to be over kind of real quick.

I like to make my voice sound like a piece of tin that's been stuck on the side of a chair, lifted up as far as it would go and then let to spring - "doooiiinng." I like to make it into a piece of metal from time to time and I can do it, both with the movements in my throat and with, uh, my little toys... So I like to take it beyond just a voice, more into the realms of a weapon.

I'm not interested in being known as the singer from Led Zeppelin.

I've stopped apologizing to myself for having this great period of success and financial acceptance.

It's crucial that I kind of keep up, without drifting into the backslapping land of cliche and lifetime achievement awards.

I daresay one good concert justifies a week of satisfaction at home.

Music means communication to me. I say 'listen you people out there, listen to my music, let's be one.' Music is a friend to me when I am lonely, when I am blue. You can't define music 'cause music is cosmos and it knows no barrier or definition. You have to feel music to dig it.

Boredom is the beginning of all destruction and everything that is negative.

Possibly the whole creative whirlwind of any musician's life is based on garnering and developing and absorbing more and more experience.

And there are certain songs that are really timepieces and shouldn't be touched. But some of them are a celebration of good humour and sensibility and I think that's okay. I don't care about the past, I'm a musician with ambition.

I listen to the crowds [laughs]... I like Blind Melon very much.

Dolly Parton's done 'Stairway to Heaven.' Anything's possible.

Old men do it better. We're not so sensitive in certain areas.

When you're 20 years old and you're making points with volume and dynamism, it's a fantastic thing to do.

Since I was a kid, I've had an absolute obsession with particular kinds of American music. Mississippi Delta blues of the Thirties, Chicago blues of the Fifties, West Coast music of the mid-Sixties - but I'd never really touched on dark Americana.

You can't give up something you really believe in for financial reasons. If you die by the roadside - so be it. But at least you know you've tried. Ten minutes in the music scene was the equal of one hundred years outside of it.

I owe everything to the musicians I work with.

Don't be hard on yourself. And take as many chances, risks, as you can.

I wanted my voice to be a tenor sax, really.

We are trying to communicate a fulfilled ideal. Does anybody remember laughter?

Page and I get offered everything: women, little boys, cocaine, the lot, to just go back and do that again. I don't think it would be a good idea at all. [But] I reserve judgment to change my mind in five years' time.

Circumspection is not one of my better, favorite conditions, really.

I have no story. My story goes from day to day.

You can't even imagine how it felt to have a cassette that you could take with you with a microphone so you could put down an idea and not have to hum it a million times to remember what it was.

The music beckons to those who are listening.

All over the world, the idea of creating an melange of international musics, it's a very healthy thing.

I am a reflection of what I sing. Sometimes I have to get serious because the things Ive been through are serious.

I think that passion and love and pain are all bearable, and they go to make love beautiful.