I have absolutely no interest in rock and roll. I'm just being David Bowie. Mick Jagger is rock and roll. I mean, I go out and my music is roughly the format of rock and roll, I use the chord changes of rock and roll, but I don't feel I'm a rock and roll artist. I'd be a terrible rock artist, absolutely ghastly.

I didn't say that wearing a glamorization of the rock artist was any truer from the other thing.

My mother was a housewife. Both from - well, my father was from a farming family, agricultural family in the north of England. And my mother came from a very working class.

Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd was the first person in rock I had seen with makeup on. He wore black nail polish and lots of mascara and black eye shadow, and he was so mysterious. It was this androgynous thing I found absolutely fascinating.

I'm still younger than Jagger... Most people are.

At no point did I ever doubt I would be as near as anybody could be to England's Elvis Presley. Even from eight or nine years old, I thought, Well, I'll be the greatest rock star in England. I just made up my mind.

I think music should be tarted up, made into a prostitute, a parody of itself. It should be the clown, the Pierrot medium.