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

I guess we all had that work ethic. None of us were rock stars, so if you had time in a studio, it was a big, big deal: you're not going to sit around taking drugs and drinking and waste it, you'll do something.

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.

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.

Paul [ Burwell] and I had also got interested in making books. We'd been working with Bob Cobbing, the sound poet, since the beginning of the 70s, and Bob had this press called Writers Forum.

We [with David Cunningham] did do Top Of The Pops. It was an eye-opener. I mean, one of the things that was so interesting - I've talked about this a few times recently, and people can't believe it - they used to do this thing called tape switch with the Musicians Union.

Every time when it comes to writing a book, I think, "I'm the last person in the world that should be doing this, I don't know anything, I can't do this." And I went through years of that with Into The Maelstrom.