On a visit to the Old Mill House one day – the same house where the Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham had choked on his own vomit and died in 1980 – Jimmy Page reached over and pressed one of the buttons in the control panel of his armchair. The facing wall slid back to reveal four large paintings.

“Are you interested in art?” he asked.

I peered at them. Thick splodges of oil on dark, brooding canvas; what appeared to be a series of bodies twisted in torment, as though in Hell. “Weird,” I said, not knowing what to say. “Heavy . . .” I turned to him, waiting for some explanation, but he merely stood there, smiling enigmatically.

Another time, he showed me a ring he had on: a serpent swallowing its tail. “What do you think?”

I didn’t know how to respond. I was, after all, still in shock – unable to believe he had invited me to his home. It was 1988, not long after his reemergence from the self-imposed exile he had undergone in the wake of Zeppelin’s cataclysmic demise, and, as everyone knew, Page didn’t do interviews. And yet his people had phoned and said he wanted to meet me. Why?

“To set the record straight,” he said. Something I would continue to try and help him do over the next 20 years.

Back then, though, Zeppelin was as unfashionable as it was possible to get. Demonised in the wake of punk, the idea that two decades on they would be considered the most exciting rock band ever could not have been conceived of. Which is why I wanted to write a book about their incredible story. Partly because at the time it was first mooted – more than four years ago now – there had simply never been a serious Zeppelin biography; partly because it would be such a wonderful story to tell.

Sex and drugs and rock’n’roll – Led Zeppelin wrote the rulebook, paving the way for every self-styled rock avatar that would follow, from Guns N’ Roses and Metallica to Nirvana and Oasis. None, though, has ever come close to emulating the occult mystery that Led Zeppelin achieved.

It was time, surely, that the story was told properly.

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