I think that pop, and to some extent rock, are like sport and fashion industry in that they're about the exuberance of youth. That's the sort of subliminal ideology.

Being big and famous doesn't get you more freedom, it gets you less.

I've always liked pop music. There was a bit of a misunderstanding with the avant-garde rock scene, because I think I was sort of swimming the wrong way, really.

When I lost the use of my hi-hat and bass drum legs, I became basically a singer. I was a drummer who did a bit of singing, and then I became a singer who did a bit of percussion.

I find it hard to take rock groups very seriously or treat them with respect. There is something absurd about these gloomy young men getting together and banging away.

I don't know how many thoughts we have a second, but it's quite an amazing number, and just to pin down the appropriate sequence of those, all you really need is a pencil and a piece of paper.

I prefer the mystic clouds of nostalgia to the real thing, to be honest.

There's no field of music which doesn't have good ideas.

What keeps me going is a constant sense of disappointment with what I've already done.

In theory, I'd like to work in a group. But the group I'd like to work in, all the musicians in them are long since dead.

I would like to think that the singer is the butterfly, and the drummer was just the little grub in the ground, working to become a caterpillar

Money is only a means.

If you cannot live with hope and create with intention or be kind to a stranger, bury your head. You are not living at all.

I feel like a feminist is gender equality.

They say God laughs when you make plans, that's why I make appointments and sometimes reschedule.

In a world where billions believe their deity conceived a mortal child with a virgin human, it's stunning how little imagination most people display.

Oh, you know record companies. . . at the end of the day, it's business. If you analyse it, you're just a piece of meat. The minute you go bad, it's: 'Next!'.

I think we’ve been oversold the value of more and undersold the value of less.

Art was always my thing. I had an art scholarship before I had a football scholarship. I'm a left-handed, right-brained, painting-drawing guy. That was always my skill.

After all, what is every man? A horde of ghosts - like a Chinese nest of boxes - oaks that were acorns that were oaks. Death lies behind us, not in front - in our ancestors, back and back until.

If a jazz player is really playing, the classical player will have to respect him.