There are a lot of composers who were fantastic, but I challenge them to write a record that you could play five times a day for two months on the radio, songs that people will want to dance to on a Saturday night.

I consider myself a sit-down comedian really, as much as anything else. I love comedy. Life is a cosmic joke.

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.

When I lost the use of my hi-hat and bass drum legs, I became basically a singer. I was a drummer who did a bit of singing, and then I became a singer who did a bit of percussion.

I would like to think that the singer is the butterfly, and the drummer was just the little grub in the ground, working to become a caterpillar

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

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.