I can show bands how to produce themselves. In the same way, many bands think you can't make it without some fat cat in London or New York to manage you. Thats just crap. All you need is someone a bit older than you with a bit of business nous whom you trust.

I've run all the bands I've been in. A great front man needs that other person. It's not enough to have a guy with a cute face standing behind a microphone. I see it like the classic romantic relationships with men and women, where the woman lets the man think he's running it. It's a classic matriarchal trait, and that's always been part of my personality.

I seem to attract and be attracted to very willful, fascinating people.

I didn't form a group to perform Cilla Black songs.

In the earlier part of the 90s, I was really hell-bent on discovering how new technology works and how to make records entirely without a producer, which isn't necessarily what fans wanted. But I had to do it because I felt it was in my destiny or whatever.

I explored rock culture and what the guitar can do though people like Jimmy Page and John McLaughlin, and the music moves away from pop.

I had a feeling about what I wanted to say, and I wasn't really qualified to discuss real things out of America because I didn't grow up there.