There's a sense of trajectories that are extraordinary about a life like this. You can reconnect with people and go back to playing with them after years and years of not even knowing if they're alive.

I needed a huge amount of energy to cope with my life. I had a huge amount of energy where stuff was concerned: it was as if all this unconscious material had been unleashed.

If I'd thought, "I can't really play this instrument," I wouldn't have done it! But I didn't care, you know. I didn't care!

I think I was like [a game of] skittles, knocked apart by this wooden ball, and there's a strength to that: you're not too self-conscious about what you're doing, so you're not too worried about it.

The Musicians Union declared you couldn't mime on Top Of The Pops, which is obviously impossible, if you've got a studio-based record that you'd worked on for a year or something. And there were a lot of terrible performances. Because on Top Of The Pops, you were just thrown onstage.

One of the things about grief - I wouldn't generalise, because everybody responds to tragedies in different ways - but I had a huge amount of energy.

Being a critic is a terrific method for killing your love of art.