Jimmy Page stands, calm and smiling, on the pavement outside his management office in London. The Led Zeppelin guitarist is taking a fresh-air break from the most extensive interview he has ever given to Rolling Stone – more than eight hours over two days. Page is also reflecting on a question that comes up a lot in the conversation: how he looks back at the havoc and excess – the drugs, drinking, hotel trashing and sometimes worse – for which Led Zeppelin were notorious in the Seventies. “Would anyone still be interested in the mud shark if the music hadn’t been there?” Page replies, still smiling, when I mention the infamous never-totally-proved tale of a young woman, a fish and a Seattle motel in 1969. “Everything else was a sideshow. It’s part of the story. But there would be no story without the work we put into the songs, the shows we played. Without that, nobody would care about the other stuff.”

The guitarist, now 68, is speaking a few weeks before the release of Celebration Day, a film and album of Led Zeppelin’s 2007 reunion concert at London’s O2 arena. The show was the band’s first full-length performance since 1980, when Zeppelin broke up following the death of drummer John Bonham. At the O2, the surviving members – Page, singer Robert Plant and bassist John Paul Jones – were joined, brilliantly, on drums by Bonham’s son Jason.

In many ways, for Page, Zeppelin never ended. He started the group, in the late summer of 1968, with an unprecedented vision – a new heavy rock built from Fifties roots, folk and psychedelia, charged by crushing, hypnotic guitar riffs – and produced their eight classic studio albums. Since they split, Zeppelin have remained one of rock’s biggest bands ever – to date, they have sold an estimated 300 million albums worldwide. And Page is still the reigning steward of their work, overseeing reissues of the catalogue and new archival releases such as 2003’s Led Zeppelin DVD. He is now preparing deluxe editions of each original album; they will start arriving next year and have, as Page promises, “added sonic and visual thrills.”

Compared to Plant and Jones, who have had long, productive solo careers, Page has made new music in fits and starts since 1980: a 1982 soundtrack, Death Wish II; the 1988 solo album Outrider; and occasional collaborations with Plant, the British singers Paul Rodgers and David Coverdale, and the American band The Black Crowes. Asked if he misses the creative momentum he had with Zeppelin in the Seventies, Page says, “Not on the level people would probably assume.” He feels his primary job now is guardian of the Zeppelin legacy. “It was important to do that,” he insists. “And that’s proved to be the right decision.”

James Patrick Page was born on January 9th, 1944. An only child, he grew up in Epsom, a town southwest of London, and swiftly became a prodigy on guitar. In his midteens, he was touring with a prominent band, Neil Christian and The Crusaders. Page was soon one of the youngest and busiest session musicians in London, playing on records by The Who, The Kinks, Them and Donovan, before giving that up in late ’66 to join, then replace, his boyhood friend Jeff Beck in The Yardbirds. Two years later, on the day after Christmas 1968, Led Zeppelin played their first U.S. show, in Denver.

Dressed in shades of gray and black, with his snow-white hair pulled back in a short ponytail, Page is lively, engaged and cheerful when he talks about his youth, sessions, The Yardbirds and Zeppelin’s rapid ascent. He talks at length about his recent book – a lavish photo history, Jimmy Page by Jimmy Page – and his website, where he shares rare audio and video clips from his entire career, and where you can now purchase an independently released LP of his legendary unissued soundtrack to the film Lucifer Rising. Page is fully engaged in current music; he enthuses about recent London shows he’s seen by Muse and a young American blues-rock combo, Rival Sons. He makes no promises about future solo efforts but insists he is an active musician, playing at home, planning projects: “I’m still playing the guitar. I’m just not seen playing the guitar. That’s the essence of it.”

Page, who has three children with his second wife, Jimena, and two more by previous relationships, does not dodge questions about his personal life or darker matter, such as substance abuse or his well-known interest in the occult philosopher Aleister Crowley. At times, Page’s response is simple and decisive: “I’m not telling you.” More often, he challenges the query, denouncing gossip and lurid Zeppelin biographies – then replies after a long pause, during which he seems to be deciding exactly what and how much he cares to divulge.

Even in this interview, one of the most revealing he has ever given, Page guards his life, dreams and intentions the way he looks after the records and reputation of Led Zeppelin: with care, no apologies and an iron belief that the answer to everything, ultimately, is in the music.

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