This is a very difficult thing to remain independent and persistent.

I have the integrity of a teenager and that's never going to be stolen from me. I'm the original virgin.

'Lollipop Opera' is the backdrop to Finsbury Park. A place that is very thriving, interracial and lot of music stores, Greek, Turkish, all sorts of immigrant music. It's utter Englishness. It blends the Jamaicans, the Irish. It's like what Jim Reeves did with American country music.

I love pop music. It's not easy to write a good pop song.

For me people are people, without meaning to sound corny, it's a plain natural fact, music is a universal language and I've always known that and observed that and treated music with great respect accordingly.

I don't think there's any such thing as rock n' roll anymore - it's an amalgamation of business interests.

Music is escapism from the grim realities of life. But then as soon as you escape into the music, from my point of view, I found I had to deal with the very things that I thought I was running away from. I wanted to hit those problems on the head and resolve them. So they didn't remain as issues in my psyche.