I'm into paradoxes. I wanted to make an album about them, but the group told me I was a pretentious fart. They were right.

I spent 20 years of my life building up Queen, and now Im spending years of my life trying to get away from it.

I'm hopeless at playing scales. Try and be instinctive first and analytic afterwords, although it's good to study the theory of music.

I'm not a person for sitting on beaches. What would I do?

I like a big neck – thick, flat and wide. I lacquered the fingerboard with Rustin's Plastic Coating. The tremolo is interesting in that the arm's made from an old bicycle saddle bag carrier, the knob at the end's off a knitting needle and the springs are valve springs from an old motorbike.

Mantovani was a great influence on me.

To my mind Keep Yourself Alive was never really satisfactory. Never had that magic that it should have had.