This interview was originally published on February 23, 2015.
By the timeLed ZeppelinreleasedPhysical Graffitiin 1975, they no longer needed to prove anything.
It was like a voyage of discovery, a topographical adventure.
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The record showed Led Zeppelin at both their most excessive and most impressive.
I was basically musically salivating on the way there.
You had written music at home prior to the sessions.
Were you living in Aleister Crowleys former estate at that point?No, I wasnt at Crowleys house.
I lived in the countryside in Sussex, and it was a really interesting house.
I had the whole of Ten Years Gone, all of the guitar orchestration, prepared in that house.
I had a good half-dozen things at least.
I always thought of that guitar part as being something that was augmented by the orchestra.
It just occurs right at the end.
I said, Oh, boy, I can visualize this.
Robert Plant has attributed the lyrics to Kashmir to a trip you two took in Morocco.
Was the riff similarly inspired?No.
But that was way after the event of actually having the whole of the structure of the song.
You included a rough orchestra mix of the song on the new companion disc.
What stands out to you about it?The phasing of the drums isnt apparent on this one.
Its more like that in a sonic picture.
Everything, including the background, is in focus.
The most surprising track on the companion disc is Everybody Makes It Through, which became In the Light.
It also doesnt have the [intro] drone.
So you could hear the work that was individually put into those things.
Same deal with In My Time of Dying.
That one is, like, the full 11 minutes.
There were no edits or drop-ins or overdubs to the version you hear.
He would have liked that [laughs].
It was the early days of ambient music, if you like.
Its just total attitude, which is probably in my DNA.
At that point in time, I think hes still in the position that the synthesizers were monophonic maybe.
But further on down the road, maybe on the 77 tour, we could have done it.
But the song didnt come into the equation; we never even took it on.
Going back to the final album, another song you had held onto from previous sessions was The Rover.
The whole thing about The Rover is the whole swagger of it, the whole guitar attitude swagger.
So that sort of thing, which is sort of probably in my DNA to be honest with you.
Each of them had their own individual charm and character.
The version thats coming out has got the guitar guide to it.
So there was an acoustic guitar to it that I took out in many other versions.
But its pretty interesting.
It was like my own sketchpad and I tried things out that are pretty radical.
I was pushing myself, thats what it was, in every degree in every angle.
You came up with the title Physical Graffiti.
Nevertheless, graffiti was appearing, and I imagined something, which was like a physical reaction to it.
The music was a physical manifestation.
