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.

I actually learned the guitar with the help of a Pete Seeger instructional record when I was 13 or 14.

I don't know what you wanna describe as Rock 'n' Roll, but I certainly thought that 60s stuff, Bob Dylan and the Beatles, changed the world a little bit. But the effect seems to have retreated. I think it's harder than we think to change the world. These things go in cycles. It doesn't seem to have done an awful lot of good, does it? You know, all the talk of racial harmony and equality in the world... we haven't got a long way since the 60s.

The internet seems to be what a lot of independent bands are doing these days. They're bypassing the studio - the big studios, EMI and all the record companies - and just doing it themselves, online, selling their stuff, getting known through that medium.

I've played rugby at school a bit. I didn't play football at school; I played football after school.

I think I could walk into any music shop anywhere and with a guitar off the rack, a couple of basic pedals and an amp I could sound just like me. There's no devices, customized or otherwise, that give me my sound.

There's no way out of here.