We did not get any money from the early records. It was all taken by crooked managers. It is just a gangster's paradise.

I was a latecomer to politics. Maybe I'm just very slow. I got to everything when everyone else had left.

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

Drinking was a big help with me making music, because drinking gives you courage. But it also makes you reckless, and that's the trouble.

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.

People have habits about what they think songs should be like. There's the folky thing of: "Poor me, I'm a sensitive person in a cruel world." Or the pop thing of: "Hey, look at me, I'm sexy."

We've all got to earn a living. And writing songs is what I do. But when I've done a record, it's not that I think it's better or worse than anyone else's, but if I think that nobody else would have done it if I hadn't, well then that's ok.