Britain, and my hometown, will always be with me wherever I go and whatever I do - but I prefer to live in California.

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

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.

I did have a life before the Animals, and I'm trying constantly to prove that I have a life after the Animals. People tend to forget that I was the frontman with War for two years. People sort of have compartmental memories.

I always wanted to be a Californian. In my wildest dreams, I always liked California - it's the place where oranges grows on trees! Fruit just falls off the trees.

It's the need for change that drives us to join forces with our brothers and sisters all around the world - but change is slow.