Tony Visconti and I had been wanting to work together again for a few years now. Both of us had fairly large commitments and for a long time we couldn't see a space in which we could get anything together.

I had enormous self-image, problems and very low self-esteem, which I hid behind obsessive writing and performing. It's exactly what I do now except I enjoy it now. I'm not driven like I was in my twenties. I was driven to get through life very quickly.

Pop stars are capable of growing old. Mick Jagger at 50 will be marvelous - a battered old roue - I can just see him. An aging rock star doesn't have to opt out life. When I'm 50, I'll prove it.

Lou Reed is the most important definitive writer in modern rock. Not because of the stuff that he does, but the direction that he will take it.

Sexuality and where it is going is an extraordinary question, for I don't see it going anywhere. It is with me, and that's it.

Rather than really have, like a close relationship to anything that's coming out today, people are just, they've got it on as background music. It's kind of the same way the cabdrivers use music; it's very disposable.

It's much easier for me to say that, the kind of music I didn't listen to was pretty much that. I mean everything, from jazz to classical to popular. And Tibetan horns were a great part of it in 1966, '67.