I don't want to be a professional cripple. And I don't see the suicide stuff as tragic.

When I'm singing I try not be a singer with a capital S. I just try to get it out so I feel comfortable with it.

The gap between rich and poor is, in fact, widening enormously. This idea of building up the powers of people who are already powerful and keeping everyone else back is a recipe for endless misery and conflict.

Because I'm associated with an avant-garde sensibility, people think I'm looking down on popular culture, but I don't want to be part of a new elitism.

I'll probably lose every friend I've got, but I think the Russians are about the only people who have behaved decently in the conflict with the Ukraine. All the evidence to the contrary seems a bit bogus to me. NATO is trying to use Ukraine to isolate and cripple Russia, and that's completely crazy and very cruel. It seems to me that our side, the English and American people, really want it to go bad there. But there's no need for it to have done so. At least that's what I think. You won't hear a lot of that on Fox News.

I only choose musicians who I think will emerge, can emerge, with their own character, while still going along with the tune in question.

I get slightly irritated by people who say they're natural rebels because it just means that they're going to be against whatever anybody does, which is almost like saying you might as well leave it as it is. I'm naturally quite conformist, really. If I go to a country and they say, "You've got to drive on the right," I'm not going to drive on the left to show that I'm different. I'm able to stick to the law. I'm not a soldier for anything, either. I'm only a singer and I don't think it makes a difference what we sing.