Believe it or not, these are the words of a Rock God. This is a man who has seen things you and I will never see, who has been places we should never go. Thirty years ago, he was part of a band deemed to be "the last word in savagery", as the press of the time had it.

Once every decade or so comes a band that changes the way rock music is made for ever. The Beatles were one, the Sex Pistols another. But the first true monsters of rock were Led Zeppelin. Perhaps more than any band since, they were "Four Lads Who Shook The World".

And shook it they did. Between 1969, when they burst into the public consciousness with their eponymously-titled debut album - a raw, brutal statement of intent, containing such classics as "Communication Breakdown" and "Dazed And Confused" - and 1980, when drummer John Bonham was found dead following a marathon drinking session involving an estimated 40 shots of vodka in 12 hours, Led Zep not only dominated rock, they were rock.

"We were the best band in the world," Jones laughs. "I think it was pretty much as far as anyone's ever going to take it. Even when we were bad, we were much better than anyone else."

As the bass player, Jones was largely out of the limelight. Bonham, "Bonzo", was the loose cannon, the hedonist of a hugely hedonistic outfit; singer Robert Plant was the figurehead, the sexual focus, and guitarist Jimmy Page the musician. Jones was the quiet one. "It was partly deliberate," he says. "I could get a lot of freedom by not being in the limelight, I could get out more. I could always be seen just disappearing with a vanload of people in the distance.

"A lot of our reputation is based on a couple of books; whenever you read that I was never there, it'll be because I'd seen the journalist coming..."

His modesty belies the depth of his talent. Page's guitar riffs may be the subject of incessant scrutiny (see The Young Boy's Guide to the Electric Guitar, Chapter One: Stairway to Heaven); but Jones's musical grounding is impressive. Before Led Zep, he worked through the Sixties as a session musician and arranger with just about anyone you care to mention: the Stones, Donovan, Lulu, Cliff Richard, Marc Bolan, Dusty Springfield, Tom Jones, Burt Bacharach, the Supremes.

"I've done it all," he says. "I was doing two or three sessions a day, six or seven days a week. I was the Motown specialist - they couldn't do Motown bass over here in those days because it was too complicated, but I could just improvise, I kind of understood that thing. So when that sound became fashionable I got tons and tons of work. I heard a radio show a few years back, one of those year by year things, and they were highlighting 1966. And in an hour-long show, the only records I hadn't played on were the American ones. Even now I can hear something I'd forgotten I'd done and I go, oh my god, that was me again..."

Led Zeppelin was the end result of all this work, formed with Page after the demise of his former band,The Yardbirds, for whom Jones had often played bass.

Led Zep are still remembered today for the quality of their songs - aside from "Stairway to Heaven", think of "Heartbreaker", "Black Dog", "Moby Dick" - and those tunes still have force and immediacy. The distinctive riff of "Whole Lotta Love" is now the theme to Top of the Pops, and superstar rapper Puff Daddy recently reworked the thunderous epic "Kashmir" for his Godzilla theme "Come With Me".

But their reputation on the road elevated Led Zep to legends. They were the original "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll" outfit. The band toured solidly for most of their time together - taking their show across America and Europe, often with sets lasting over two and a half hours.

Tales of wild debauchery and almost satanic mayhem followed. If it wasn't TV sets out of windows, it was groupies stripped naked and tied to hotel lobby chairs with Sellotape. There is a particularly nasty anecdote involving an impressionable groupie, a baby shark, and a general collapse of any kind of social or personal morality.

Jones frowns. "These things get exaggerated," he says, though there is a twinkle in his eye. "I do remember some fridges bobbing on the sound in Seattle: the hotel was on the bay and the next morning there were these little guys in little boats from the hotel rowing around trying to collect them. The next time we played Seattle we had to put a huge deposit down. But this stuff goes around. I can't imagine a rock 'n' roll band that doesn't do those sorts of things. I mean, don't they still? What's the point of staying in a hotel in America and just ordering room service?" However, at the age of 53, those days are firmly behind him. He quietly laughs off any "old rocker" label; even refusing to rise to the bait when I question how he might have felt when, as long ago as 1977, he and his kind were deemed over the hill by (then) young nihilists, the Sex Pistols.

"At the time I hated them back," he says, "I thought it was unlovely noise by unlovely people. But then I started listening to it - I mean, I really liked the attitude and the energy. But then there's good and bad in everything. I was listening to some Sex Pistols the other day, and actually, you know, it rocks. And it didn't rock in quite such a distant way to how we used to."

Jones has spent most of his time since then in the studio, getting back to the business of music. The result is in the shops now. "ZOOMA", his first solo album, is Jones immersing himself in music once again. Exclusively instrumental, it is surprising in both its freedom from any lingering Led Zep cliches and in its cutting-edge modernity - more "Block Rockin Beat" than "Stairway to Heaven".

"In a way I suppose Big Beat started from hard rock," he says. "The only thing that's really different is the use of samples and of programmed rhythm. I definitely wanted to use electronics, but being a bass player and understanding rhythm sections I thought it was much more exciting to have a live rhythm section. Besides, people like the Chemical Brothers and the Prodigy are already doing that." Does he feel they owe him some sort of musical debt? He laughs. "Who can say? Everyone's influenced by everyone else. I suppose I owe them something."

It is all in marked contrast to the output of fellow band members Page and Plant, who have remained firmly in the long hair and boot on the monitor Monster of Rock camp. Their "reunion" collaborative efforts have merely been a continuation of the Zeppelin style.

JONES SHRUGS. "Well, you know, they've got together to do whatever it is they're doing... I don't even know if they're still doing it, to tell you the truth. I wouldn't say we're the closest of mates, but there's always business to sort out. We have a formal relationship, put it that way. We'll sit down and discuss business - BBC sessions or this or that, and then we'll go our separate ways."

So we can dismiss any ideas of a Page, Plant and Jones 30th anniversary tour? He shakes his head. "I've always said that with no John Bonham there's no Led Zeppelin, it's as simple as that. You can have a Page and Plant, but you can't have a Led Zeppelin. I've got a solo career now, I can do what I want and although I'm very proud of what we did as Led Zeppelin, I think we can leave it at that." Jones takes a final sip of his coffee. "After all," he says, almost to himself, "it's only music isn't it? It's not a cure for cancer."