Pop is totally results-oriented and there is a very strong feedback loop.

Law is always better than war.

Some people are very good at being 'stars' and it suits them. I'm grudging about it and I find it annoying.

I'm not interested in possible complexities. I regard song structure as a graph paper.

When I've finally got the title, I think, "Okay, yes, now I know where we are. Now I know what it is. Fine, that must be finished or nearly finished.

Frequently, I go straight into the studio and see what's around. I might hire a couple of instruments that I've never used - maybe a particular type of electronic organ or an echo unit. Then I just dabble with sounds until something starts to happen that suggests a texture. The texture suggests some kind of mood, and the mood suggests some kind of lyric. That's like working in reverse, often quite the other way around, from sound to song. Although often they stop before they get to the song stage.

I remember when in the early days of rock'n'roll, when everything sounded totally different, all amazing and blah blah blah blah blah. Now you can play me one second of any record from that time, and I'll say "1959" or "1961." I can hear precisely. It's like it has a huge date stamp on it.