I suppose when I started playing guitar, it was the means to an end. I never thought of myself as a fully fledged guitar instrumentalist. And my early excursions on the electric guitar were curtailed when Eric Clapton came on the scene, and I decided I was never going to be in the same arena as a Clapton or a Peter Green.

I kind of like the idea of living a rather ordinary life as a shopkeeper, and I examine that possibility as one of the outcomes of the young Gerald Bostock growing older.

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.

Come with me to the Winged Isle- Northern father's Western child Where the Dance of Ages is playing still through far marches of Acres Wild.

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

In writing lyrics - well, for me, anyway - it's about getting into character, you know? 'Who is writing this?' In the case of the original 'Thick As A Brick,' supposedly a precocious, very young child who's fantasizing about his future and the context of all the confusing elements to which school boys are subjected at that time.

Martin, Dave, and I get together and rough out a few songs and put them on cassettes for some reference...With the actual music, I'm not interested in objectivity, quite the opposite. I want a solely and totally subjective experience...A lot of pop music is about stealing pocket money from children.