You can get the oldest drum machine out and whack out four sounds like a kick, snare, and two types of high-hat, and try and come up with the freshest thing on the spot. The gear can guide you - you can choose one bit of gear and it's obviously got its restrictions and its limitations, but at the same time, you've got to exploit what it's capable of and what it's best used for.

You can sit in front of a computer and have a blank slate and be completely overwhelmed by the possibilities and not get anywhere.

Your reputation is what influences people to think, feel and talk about you the way they do.

It seems like people need to get into the last album until they can tolerate the next one. And then, slowly but surely, by the time the new one's available, they've gotten into the last one and they really love it.

It's very hard to predict what people are thinking.

Despite a lot of people thinking that everything gets more and more difficult, I always assumed that people are going to be "Oh, at last you buckled, you're trying to be commercial."

I get nostalgic for things that didn't really exist. I might have a cassette from the first time a Melle Mel track, say, got played on radio in Manchester. And it might be a copy of a copy of a copy of a tape and there's all these weird nuances and distortions that have affected what I know as the truth, if you like, of that track.