London’s Gore Hotel is a fitting place to meet Jimmy Page. It was once, after all, the capital’s wildest hang-out, famed for its ‘anything goes’ celebrity gatherings and scene of The Rolling Stones’ infamous launch party for their Beggars Banquet album in 1968. If only walls could talk...

But until then, there’s always Jimmy Page’s self-titled photographic autobiography. With more than 600 images researched and curated by the Led Zeppelin guitarist himself, it’s an accurate depiction of life inside one the biggest bands of all time.

“I’ve been stockpiling all this for so long, and I really wanted to commit to it,” says Page of the book, originally released two years ago as a very limited, exclusive run, now on a wider, more affordable release with additional material.

It is a staggeringly detailed piece of work, covering Page’s whole career from choirboy to the Led Zeppelin reunion show at the O2.

“You can really see the decades whooshing by,” says Page, “and the photos I love best are the ones that really capture the time.”

It’s not all fame-related in the book. It begins when Page was 13, playing a guitar that’d been left in his family home by the previous occupants. He tried to play it, but couldn’t, and then a school friend tuned it, showed him a couple of chords and he was away.

“I realised I had a bit of a flair for the guitar when I was about 14,” he says.

Now the book is finished, he’s concentrating on getting back to his playing best, with the idea of playing some career-spanning shows on his own in 2015.

“I need to do some musical push-ups before then,” he says. “I’ve been working on this book for so long, and I’m so pleased with it. Now I can start limbering up.”