We have a society where every hit maker and TV presenter is gay.

If you write great songs with meaning and emotion, they will last for ever because songs are the key to everything.

Religion promotes the hatred and spite against gays. From my point of view, I would ban religion completely. Organised religion doesn't seem to work. It turns people into really hateful lemmings and it's not really compassionate.

I've reached the stage of my life where learning is so important to me. I go through the past enough when I play my old songs on stage. And I don't mind doing that. But I want to think about the future.

Johnny, can't you come out to play in your empty garden?

I heard Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis, and that was it. I didn't ever want to be anything else. I just started banging away and semi-studied classical music at the Royal Academy of Music but sort of half-heartedly.

When people go to rehab and come out, they go through a difficult period, a lot of people. I never had that. I was so glad to be rid of all that crap that for me, to learn again and to function as a human being and learn how to participate in the human race again was just pure joy.