Robert Plant

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.

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

I’m a Leo with something odd rising.

Whenever I have bid a hasty goodbye to a loved one, I’ve always made sure that my record collection was safely stored away in the boot of the car….Sometimes the parting was so fast, I was not able to get them into alphabetical order, but I still got away with my records, that was essential.

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

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.

I haven’t had an interview in two years where I wasn’t asked about Bond!

The truth of the matter is, trap has taken over so much that even our New York rappers are doing nothing but trap songs, because they feel that that’s the way to make it.

I’ve lived in this fame trip since 1986. I’ve found that unless you’re rooted in something bigger than fame, you start believing your own hype.

My number one thing is that it doesn’t just happen. You shouldn’t feel discouraged if you’re not waking up and feeling amazing about yourself. That’s not necessarily how it works. It doesn’t take one shopping spree to give you that confidence. It’s a developing process. Everyone goes at their own speed… As long as you take every opportunity to learn more about yourself and fall more in love with yourself every day, you’re doing good.

Every kid has something they’re good at, that you hope they find and gravitate toward.

People will say, ‘Oh, fashion magazines are so bad, they’re giving girls a negative message’-but we’re also the fattest country in the world, so it’s not like we’re all looking at fashion magazines and not eating.

The death penalty is like the McRib. When you can’t have it, it seems so tantalizing. But when they bring it back, you think, ‘Wow, this is ethically wrong’.

I did Jonathon Ross last year and he said ‘do people do impressions of David Brent?’ and I went ‘well, they can’t really because he’s such a normal bloke’. Then, after the show, me and Ross are walking through the car park and this bloke jumps out and goes ‘der-ner-ner-ner-ner’, does the David Brent dance and runs away. Jonathon Ross was in hysterics: ‘all that shit you came out with and then some bloke jumps out and runs away’. But on the whole it doesn’t really happen.

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?”

The things that people do come so easy to me. I could do it in my sleep. But I’m such a perfectionist that when something is too easy to me, I actually feel guilty.

I’m just a public-schoolboy. I’ve got a degree. I’m from a middle-class family in Devon. I’ve got no story.

I guess you can get to a level where you choose. I guess when you reach that point maybe you start making decisions about whether you want to be a leading man or woman. I’m not at that point at all. Where I am now, you’re very much at everybody else’s mercy. You have no control over your career in a lot of ways. It’s just important to know what your own goals are, because that’s empowering.

The Lion King always makes me cry, especially when Simba’s father gets trampled.

Confidence is everything in this business.

I was a little excited but mostly blorft. ‘Blorft’ is an adjective I just made up that means ‘Completely overwhelmed but proceeding as if everything is fine and reacting to the stress with the torpor of a possum.’ I have been blorft every day for the past seven years.