** Robert Plant: **I think I surprise myself. And I think that that’s the reason that I do it.

GQ: Surprise yourself in finding what?

** Robert Plant: **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, and I try to apply my gift to that. If I can continually be surprised then I’m alert.

GQ: And people who have been doing what you do for a long time often get in a situation where they find themselves not learning?

** Robert Plant: **The thing is: 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.

GQ: What do you think the difference is between the people who take the left path and the right path?

** Robert Plant: **Probably about four or five inches on the waistline.

GQ: Slimness is the key?

** Robert Plant: **No, you become slim because you become lean and because you’re looking for clues. If I have to justify myself in this absurd life that I have then I have to have something that’s reasonably creditable to go with my name and my CBE [Plant was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 2009] and my lifetime Vice Presidency [of the soccer team Plant supports, Wolverhampton Wanderers]. So, yeah, I’m always in school. It’s crucial that I kind of keep up, without drifting into the backslapping land of cliché and lifetime achievement awards.

GQ: Yes, it’s so easy for people to reach for their slippers.

** Robert Plant: **Well, I don’t think it’s easy. I think that those that have their slippers, and their Fair Isle sleeveless sweaters, getting ready for the chill of October, I think quite a few of them are in mourning for the great moments of invention and explosion. And I think it’s not supposed to go on forever. It would be wonderful if it did. But there’s no point in being judgmental. 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. In two weeks’ time I shall be playing on the north side of the Mexican border with a band led by an American-Hispanic accordionist at a little festival called El Cosmico, and there may be a thousand people there. A door swings open, I’ll have a quick peep and enjoy it. I was thinking the other day how strange it is that the generation of front men, if you want to call it that, how many are left that just sing and twirl the microphone. And there’s not many of us. And so I kind of disguise my limitations by hanging out with very talented people. The excitement of the collision between the microphone-twirling guy from 1966 to now is just a fantastic adventure. There aren’t many of us left and I’ve managed to kind of cover my tracks pretty good.

GQ: How?

** Robert Plant: **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...to get to this place, I’m really still excited. The huge vast diagonals within the music that I’ve been involved with.