After people like Lennon and Dylan, I think David Bowie brought a very modernistic intelligence and the necessity for change. I think he was completely positive, certainly through one and a half decades of completely overriding influence, in the best of popular music, and I take my bloody hat off to him!

Freddie will have been dead for 20 years in November. I was staggered because it doesn't seem possible that all that time has passed and I still miss him. He was my best friend, my best man. We shared so much and I owe so much to him.

No one really knew Freddie. He was shy, gentle and kind. He wasn't the person he put over on stage.

Sometimes the problem is not the people in the band, but the people around the band.

It's a nonstop schedule, really. I had lost myself somewhere.

When you're in a band that's so big when you're young, you kind of lose your identity a little bit. You just become part of the band. I just needed to get away from it.

We, as pop stars, are people not androids. We’ve got views. I’ve got opinions and I don’t see why I shouldn’t use a bit of my art to put them over. I think music is one of the most powerful media forces in the world today.