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.

I don't find the business easy. The moment you start talking about the business, you start sounding like someone in Spinal Tap.

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

The cultural mix that's happened in the United States is wonderful! Funny enough, one of the most wonderful things about it is that there is no American race.

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.

I looked at what adults were doing and how they wanted to earn money, and I really didn't want to do that. I wanted to go away.

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."