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

I play music a lot but on my own mostly, so it was nice to be around other people. There was a certain sense a relief in the physical act of just playing and being with other musicians.

I know people who grow old and bitter. I want to keep making a fresh start. I don't want them to defeat me. That would be suicidal.

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've always liked pop music. There was a bit of a misunderstanding with the avant-garde rock scene, because I think I was sort of swimming the wrong way, really.

I just saw a recent television program about art, and it was saying how from the end of the Second World War, so much of what our culture is comes from not just the United States in general, but New York in particular. In my case, I can't imagine my life without the extraordinary bebop jazz revolution in New York in late '40s and '50s.

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.