I enjoy making solo albums because over the years it's evolved into more of a genuine personal expression of story-telling and day dreams, and I work in a way that has more control.

Life on the road can get a little one-dimensional. I didn't want to reach 40 and have to say all I'd done was look out the window of a tour bus and get drunk.

When you cut human beings down to size, we're really quite simple creatures; food, shelter, warmth, light, heat and you build it up from there really until you finally go Gucci shoes or whatever it is or whatever your consumer desires are. All those desires are ultimately, they're about gratification.

We're better than Metallica. We're better musicians, better players. Put it this way, they can try to walk onstage after an Iron Maiden show if they want.

In the days when Glastonbury was an alternative festival, it was quite interesting. Now it is the most bourgeois thing on the planet ... we'll leave the middle classes to do Glastonbury and the rest of the great unwashed will decamp to Knebworth and drink a lot of beer and have fun.

When I was in employment as a regular line pilot, I used to take unpaid leave to go on tour with Iron Maiden. I got lucky - they let me off

There are basically two categories of music: Metal and bullshit.