I used to hang out a lot in jazz clubs, and the groups took to a kid like me who wasn't afraid to get up and sing with a jazz band. Then I started to hang out in rock clubs and learned to carry off different styles.

I may sing the same songs for over 40 years now but I always sing them in different ways in order to keep the excitement and passion alive.

I'm really still a child of the Forties. I still think about it a lot, about the repercussions of armed conflict. Until 1953 we had rationing. We couldn't buy meat, we couldn't buy pleasurable goods like cigarettes and sweets. I didn't starve - my family were lucky - but I knew what it was like standing in line waiting for foodstuffs.

From my personal point of view, the Animals are dead. They killed themselves.

Everything changes and, somewhere along the line, I'm changing with it.

The basis of everything that I plugged into when I was younger was blues, and it always stayed with me.

On Memorial Day, I don't want to only remember the combatants. There were also those who came out of the trenches as writers and poets, who started preaching peace, men and women who have made this world a kinder place to live.