I think it's hypocritical to complain about the rise of China. For 50 years, we were telling everybody in the world that the big threat was Communism, so now the countries that were Communists are now rampant capitalists - and they're doing very well, in some ways much better than the UK. Well, we asked for it. We told them that's what you have to do, and they're doing it, buying up your biggest hotels in New York. You have to laugh.

Because of my politics, people think I'm anti-American. But I was quite the reverse. What I don't like about the United States is when the government acts like an old, imperial 18th- or 19th-century European power.

People are quite shocked when you remind them that Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra never wrote a song that they recorded in their lives, as far as I know.

I don't want to be a professional cripple. And I don't see the suicide stuff as tragic.

When I'm singing I try not be a singer with a capital S. I just try to get it out so I feel comfortable with it.

Being big and famous doesn't get you more freedom, it gets you less.

We did not get any money from the early records. It was all taken by crooked managers. It is just a gangster's paradise.