I wanted to give five solid years of being there all the time (with Sean). I hadn't seen my first son Julian grow up, and now there's a 17-year-old man on the phone talking about motorbikes. No matter what artistic gains I get, or gold records, if I can't make a success out of my relationship with the people I love, then everything else is bullsh*t.

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV

When I was a child I experienced moments of not wanting to see the ugliness, not wanting to see not being wanted. This lack of love went into my eyes and into my mind.

I'm an Elvis fan because it was Elvis who really got me out of Liverpool.

Yoko [Ono] was well into liberation before I met her. She'd had to fight her way through a man's world - the art world is completely dominated by men - so she was full of revolutionary zeal when we met.

When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life.

Don't you think that the Beatles gave every sodden thing they've got to be the Beatles? That took a whole section of our youth - that whole period - when everybody else was just goofin' off we were workin' 24 hours a day!