Mistreating your drum set is just one step below child abuse

My nerves before a gig got worse; I had terrible bad nerves all the time. Once we started... I was fine.

People who don't take care of their drums really annoy me.

I don't consider that I'm particularly influenced by anyone or anything. But when I started playing, I was influenced by early soul. It was just that feel, that sound.

I've wanted to be a drummer since I was about five years old. I used to play on a bath salt container with wires on the bottom, and on a round coffee tin with a loose wire fixed to it to give a snare drum effect. Plus there were always my Mum's pots and pans. When I was ten, my Mum bought me a snare drum. My Dad bought me my first full drum kit when I was 15. It was almost prehistoric. Most of it was rust.

I have no qualm about the quality of the contemporary repertory.

Sometimes you'd come up against a brick wall... or sometimes you go into a fill and you'd know halfway through it was going to be disastrous.