We see each other [ with Iman Abdulmajid] a lot. I couldn't stand to be separated for months. It became quickly apparent to me that I needed to find a balance between my absolute work obsession and a private life that we could share without my disappearing all the time.

However, there's no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums.

Critics I don't understand. They get too intellectual. They're not very well-versed in street talk; it takes them longer to say it. So they have to do it in dictionaries and they take longer to say it.

It's a compulsive need to wreck everything. You might notice there's a pattern of stripping down and building back up again throughout my life. But I guess that's how some of us conduct our lives.

We were terribly excited, and I think we took it on our shoulders that we were creating the 21st century in 1971. That was the idea. And we wanted to just blast everything in the past, rather like the vorticists did at the beginning of the century in the Britain or the dadaists did Europe, you know. It was the same sensibility of everything is rubbish, and all rubbish is wonderful.

The people who don't know so much about me regard me more sexually.

I believe that I often bring out the best in somebody's talents.