Obviously record companies tend to be following what the scene is rather than making the scene.

It's really tough to get happy music going, you know?

Pompeii is an extraordinary place to be because it was preserved exactly as it was. There are many other sites. If you visit any other antiquity-type sites throughout the world, they're very damaged with what's gone on over the centuries since they were abandoned. But this one was just, like, sealed, so you're looking at rock surfaces and the carving of letters and names in the stones looks like it was done yesterday.

Little ideas can pop into one's head at any time, and if I'm being reasonably efficient I've got it close enough to hand, then I pop that little tiny moment of a few seconds down onto a tape and then I can forget about it for... years sometimes.

Being a musician, being a person who's playing tours and making records is a part-time thing for me at age. I did it, I lived it and I breathed it every day of my life for 30-odd years and now I am slowing down a little bit. But it does not mean that I am any less intense and dedicated to the work that I am doing now. I have other priorities in life as well.

I went to a school in Cambridge, which I thought was completely rotten. Yes, hated it. Now they want me to go back there and support this, that, and the other and I haven't managed to pluck up the courage to even face it yet.

There's no way out of here.