Robert Plant

Well, 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; people run away, pull their hair off, go off in different directions, nodding their heads, and going, “Oh, god”.

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.

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!

I made my life ambitious and big and crazy, and basically now I am the helmsman of this mad affair, and I need to take stock. I write these songs, and I live and die in the middle of them, but I can’t really tell you the truth about me, cause I don’t know what it is. It’s a f***ing great journey but it doesn’t all smell of roses.

[on accepting his CBE] I owe everything to the musicians I work with. From the UK to Africa to Tennessee, it is their brilliance that I bounce off. Alone I’m nothing.

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?”

As we’ve seen, Trump is a masterful denier of both reality and responsibility. He’s a man who would kick you in the nuts and then tell you that your penis did it.

I don’t like Tommy on Broadway at all. I like the music, I’m pleased with Pete’s success but I don’t like what they’ve done to it.

Spring is nature’s way of saying, “Let’s party!”

This is just to get the kids ready to play. It’s not about the score of the games. We want the boys to learn what they can from this. It helps the coaches see where we’re at and what we need to be working on.

I still want Oprah to play my best friend. I want to spend time with Oprah.

I have good health and I am happy to be on the road all the time.

I think we’re a band with a lot of history now so it’s nice to come up with something that doesn’t have any history at all.

[On turning down the chance to appear in Ocean’s Twelve] Why say a couple of lines opposite Brad Pitt when I could be playing lead back home?

My body is the shape I live in and it shapes the way I live.

It’s good to get information and feedback from your fans on the Internet. But a lot of it is downright mean. There are three or four guys who say they’re Vince Neil and people come to the shows because these guys promise them tickets, and when there’s no tickets there, they get mad at the band. That kind of stuff bums me out.

There are different audiences out there, and everyone has different tastes of what they want. And it’s a good thing because otherwise, there wouldn’t be enough stuff to go around.

The craziest thing I’ve ever done to get a guy’s attention? I admit I stalked someone. I showed up at a restaurant where I knew the guy worked, and we were actually good friends and had lost touch, and I pretended that I didn’t know he worked there. And then ran into him and, “Oh my God, you work here? I had no idea.” It’s the most manipulative thing I’ve done in my entire life, but it all worked out very well, so I have no regrets.

I’m probably in that next group of actors they call if Scarlett (Johansson) or Keira (Knightley) turns down a part. But I feel really lucky. To be a working actor is pretty incredible, because 99 per cent of actors are out of work. I know a lot of talented people who are better actors than me but haven’t had a break. It’s all down to timing and luck.

I’m off everything apart from the fags and the coffee. I don’t know if it’s worked. It works up until you take your first drink.

A hundred and thirteen is a lot of tests. It’s approaching the amount that you’d ask your doctor for the morning after you woke up from a one-night stand with Colin Farrell.