Anybody who thinks pop music's easy should try to make a pop single and find out that it isn't.

I think there are deep structural things that are wrong in the world. The US is the Western empire of the 19th century regrouping in the 20th, not out of wickedness, but because everybody else in Eurasia was so completely destroyed by the Second World War. Economically, that was quite a useful time for the US, so they ended up in the position of enormous power. And like any great power, they're going to act in their own interests. The problem is due to what the business community wants, which is to make as much money as they can out of what other people do and pay as little as possible for it.

I stopped drinking a few years ago, and 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. You can get away with that your 20s, but not in your 60s, and I'll be 70 next year. Life is a small space now, much more intimate. I'm not out there in the world anymore, but I'm watching.

In the past, so many of my records, really, have been sketches for records that never really got made.

I prefer the mystic clouds of nostalgia to the real thing, to be honest.

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.

On the whole, I tend not to listen to my peers.