The United States is a country where everybody can start again.

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."

What hurts people a lot is taking humiliation.

I can't imagine my life without the extraordinary bebop jazz revolution in New York in late '40s and '50s.

There's no field of music which doesn't have good ideas.

Potentially, America is really the greatest, but it's not yet, I don't think. It's too much like an old-fashioned empire, waving the stick and dropping too many bombs on too many people.

I think that pop, and to some extent rock, are like sport and fashion industry in that they're about the exuberance of youth. That's the sort of subliminal ideology.