As a musician, life is not over just because you are getting older, and so I find retirement a very frightening and dark thought.

Classical music only really came into my life in 1969. I wish I had heard classical music and church music when I was a teenager or even as a child.

There's always going to be a little bit of autobiographical content to everything. It's how you lend some authority to what you write - you give it that weight by drawing on your direct experiences and indirect experiences from people that you know well, or a little.

But the tune ends too soon for us all

I think I've owned all the models of iPods so far. And these days between my iPod, iPhone and my personal laptop computer, I'm someone who is very, very grateful for all the ways to listen to music and completely switch off from people around me and listen to the music in detail, which is very hard to do if you're in a room with other people.

When I was a teenager, I really didn't like loud rock music. I listened to jazz and blues and folk music. I've always preferred acoustic music. And it was only, I suppose, by the time Jethro Tull was getting underway that we did let the music begin to have a harder edge, in particular with the electric guitar being alongside the flute.

Cafe society is as old as the hills. Starbucks and its imitators are the coffee face of the new man in a hurry.