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

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.

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

I find it hard to take rock groups very seriously or treat them with respect. There is something absurd about these gloomy young men getting together and banging away.

My heroes are people like Picasso and Miro and people who at last really reach something in their old age, which they absolutely couldn't ever have done in their youth.

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.

There are people I would like to work with. Its a bit harder, because I live out in the sticks anyway, and plus being in a wheelchair means that I cant really circulate. So I tend to stick to my own thing.