Citater

I think we’ve come a long way since then. The big thing that changed was when ecstasy came along in Britain.

I’ve smoked so much pot I’m surprised I haven’t turned into a bush.

I don’t think anybody comes close to The Beatles, including Oasis

Radio as we know it is pretty much changing completely.

Composing music is hard work.

I’ll be back.

Women rule the world and no man has ever done anything that a woman either hasn’t allowed him to do or encouraged him to do.

I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.

I’m very emotional; I think I may go mad in several years’ time.

I love to be individual, to step beyond gender.

I don’t think punk ever really dies, because punk rock attitude can never die.

I’d spend all my time in the nightclubs, or in my bedroom bonking

All of us are products of our childhood.

Go ahead, make my day.

I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass… And I’m all out of bubblegum.

I found this out over the years, that racism is a thinly veiled disguise over economics and money. It really is.

The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10.000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band.

I grew up on radio, not TV.

Man, I have had so much plastic surgery, I don’t even recognize myself, sometimes. If I catch a glimpse in a window or something, I think it is someone else.

I’m a writer … I really wouldn’t like to make singing a full-time occupation.

I’m a perfectionist; I’ll work until I drop.

I do like my rock stars to be a little larger than life. I don’t mind the earnest ones at all, but I do like a bit of individuality.

I really wish I was less of a thinking man and more of a fool not afraid of rejection.

I’m not everybody’s cup of tea. But sometimes criticism can be hurtful. Be respectful. I’m a good piano player, I can sing well, I write good songs. If you don’t like it, fair enough. But give me a break.

When I started out, everyone seemed to be adopting these names… Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious. I wasn’t really Rotten or Vicious or Nasty, so I wanted something a bit more funny – yet something that seemed real rock ‘n’ roll… something that acknowledged my ambition.

It was the case in the 70s and 80s that people believed music could change the world. But now people aren’t making music because they want to change the world; they’re making music because they want to just make a ton of money.

I’m going to change you from a rooster to a hen in one shot!

A star can never die. It just turns into a smile and melts back into the cosmic music, the dance of life.

There’s nothing I like more than being on a dance floor with a thousand people feeling love for humanity.

I’m never in my life going to do a record that’s a tribute to myself. I don’t need it.

It’s hard to picture the direction Madness should go through, because I’m sometimes amused by things, but sometimes I’m annoyed by things.

You should always celebrate your successes because someone else will celebrate your failures.

May the Force be with you.

The pin-up thing took us completely by surprise. I found it hard because I got singled out, and I didn’t like it. There was a lot of disillusionment.

I’ve met every freak in the business.

Music can change the world because it can change people.

I might have to go on breakfast TV, which would mean getting up early.

For me there is something primitively soothing about this music, and it went straight to my nervous system, making me feel ten feet tall.

You cannot get an A if you’re afraid of getting an F.

Bob is Bob and he always will be. And that’s why he’s Bob.

After the first album, Meat just lost it completely. “GRUNT! GRUNT! GRUNT! GRUNT!” I had to listen to that for nine months. That pig can’t sing a fucking note.

I won’t be a rock star. I will be a legend.

I’d like to be known for more than being the guy in the big suit.

We’re a bit flashy, but the music’s not one big noise.

The reason we’re successful, darling? My overall charisma, of course.

I never picked up a guitar as a kid, partly because my dad didn’t want the noise in our little back-to-back in Sheffield.

One of the jokes in ‘Back to the Future’ is how people in the 1950s don’t get 1980s fashion. People in the 1950s were right.

Avant Garde is French for bullshit.

For us you have to make peace with that song because it’s stronger than you in a way. It’s not going away.

I have always felt a little homeless. It’s a strange thing.

We’d be nowhere without our looks.

All things must pass.

Being blonde now doesn’t mean Marilyn Monroe vulnerability. Blonde in the Eighties means being in control.

I don’t love myself to death. I just don’t think I’ve got any bad points.

“I’m not conceited. Conceit is a fault and I have no faults.”

Everybody got it wrong. I said I was into porn again, not born again.

It’s always about the music, never about anything else.

Feed me, Seymour!

You have to believe in yourself even when others don’t, or you won’t achieve anything.

I used to have a drug problem, now I make enough money.

Fame and fortune is fairly irrelevant to me. It’s nice because it gives creative freedom. But just wanting to be famous is ridiculous because it’s so vacuous.

I hope I die before I get old.

The hardest thing about being James Brown is I have to live. I don’t have no down time.

I’m surprised that I’ve survived my own dysfunction, really.

If all of the people in Hollywood had plastic surgery and went on vacation, there wouldn’t be a person left in town.

I believe I’m one of the loneliest people in the world.

The music is all. People should die for it. People are dying for everything else, so why not the music?

I believe that a hundred years from now, when people look back at the 20th century, they will look at Miles, Bird, Clifford Brown, Ella and Dizzy, among elders as our Mozarts, our Chopins, our Bachs and Beethovens.

A lot of songs that have been called sexist are about my daughter. I did a song called Girl which went: “You treat me like a dog and I shake my tail for you”, because she’s the only girl who’s ever had me on all fours doing impressions of horses.

Greatness occurs when your children love you, when your critics respect you and when you have peace of mind.

I was married for 36 years but now I’m free.

You’ll never find peace of mind until you listen to your heart.

We live in ugly times.

The trick to having a happy life is being good at something.

Music is everybody’s possession. It’s only publishers who think that people own it.

I don’t sleep all that much, but when I do, it’s sound.

Whoever invented God is an idiot. God is absolutely man’s worst invention.

My son likes Madness. I though he was going to start liking A Flock Of Seagulls, which worried me a lot…

What we were trying to do differently was this sort of layered sound.

If I could, I’d be a recluse. I do want to be one. I’m trying really hard. But it’s a difficult thing to pull off in this job.

If you have stage fright, it never goes away. But then I wonder: is the key to that magical performance because of the fear?

Shameless self-publicity works, of course: living your life as a soap opera.

On my darkest days, I wear my brightest colors.

I actually learned the guitar with the help of a Pete Seeger instructional record when I was 13 or 14.

The root of all evil isn’t money; rather, it’s not having enough money.

I always felt rock and roll was very, very wholesome music.

I think my melodies are superior to my lyrics.

I think of myself as a performance artist. I hate being called a pop star. I hate that.

In me soul, I’m gentle.

Honor your mistake as a hidden intention.

I am not an animal! I am a human being.

We didn’t feel we fitted into the ’80s.

I was not going to be a stupid girl singer. I was going to be way more than that.

I could never deny myself bein’ an artist.

You want a hero in the music world? James Brown. He brought a feeling to music without really using words. He’s just famous for his sound.

I’d rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints.

I don’t ever want to grow up. That’s boring.

When I was I younger I didn’t want to be gay. Not because I was scared of the sexual thing; I didn’t want to be a clone. Now this was in the late ’70s.

There is no such thing as a reluctant star.

Scotty, beam me up!

Money is a good thing and it’s obviously useful, but to work only for money or fame would never interest me.

You have the sun, you have the moon, you have the air that you breathe – and you have the Rolling Stones!

I grew up playing in clubs – that’s my spiritual stomping ground.

Deep in my heart I’m concealing things that I’m longing to say. Scared to confess what I’m feeling – frightened you’ll slip away.

Music has healing power. It has the ability to take people out of themselves for a few hours.

Unfortunately, America doesn’t have a minister of culture, and I don’t understand why. It’s really bad for young people.

The problem with self-improvement is knowing when to quit.

I hope that on my tombstone it says ‘Born 1933, died 2043.’ I hope that’s my legacy.

Everyone probably thinks that I’m a raving nymphomaniac, that I have an insatiable sexual appetite, when the truth is I’d rather read a book.

When I was 14, I would sit up in my room and write till my eyes would bleed.

My whole career was launched in such sort of poptastic style with ‘Kids In America’, and I liked – and like – being poptastic. Songs big on melody, high on energy, lots of attitude… what’s wrong with that?

Having unlimited choices can paralyze you creatively.

All guys get into music because they love music and they also want to get the girls.

Everyone who did not arrive on a private jet put your hands in the air.

Queen had its time and place, and at the moment I’m not concentrating on that era.

He slimed me.

This world we live in is the dance of the creator. Dancers come and go in the twinkling of an eye, but the dance lives on.

The only funny lines on this show are the ones behind me.

I think to be a good songwriter, you have to be able to play an instrument.

You can’t hurt me, I found peace within myself.

I never listen to the radio unless I rent a car.

When I hear my voice on a record I absolutely loathe my voice. I cannot stand my voice.

We wouldn’t have put it out with the name Queen on it if we didn’t think it was musically up to scratch.

I used to jog but the ice cubes kept falling out of my glass.

We had to leave Norway and go where it was all happening, which was London. We loved it there, but it was hard. We had no money – we were literally starving. It started to get ugly.

If you are not doing what you love, you are wasting your time.

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road’ll take you there.

Have you listened to the radio lately? Have you heard the canned, frozen and processed product being dished up to the world as American popular music today?

Get away from her, you bitch!

I am my own experiment. I am my own work of art.

I’m just like anyone. I cut and I bleed and I embarass easily.

I had Botox and I hated it. For four long months, I looked like a different person.

Say hello to my little friend!

My big hobby is photography. I collect stereo photographs from the 19th century.

My favorite music is ’80s music which drives people around me crazy. I really love it.

The only thing I’m allergic to is criticism.

When I perform on stage, I often pretend to be someone other than myself to bring a certain emotion or intent to a song.

Oh, I was not made for heaven. No, I don’t want to go to heaven. Hell is much better. Think of all the interesting people you’re going to meet down there!

We’ve done an arrangement with an orchestra, but I think the best stuff tends to come when it’s just the four of us.

The bigger the better; in everything.

If someone really wants to hurt you, they’ll find a way whatever. I don’t want to live my life worrying about it.

I keep telling people: Don’t make me the poster boy for AA because I don’t know a lot about sobriety, but I do know a lot about drinking.

I met Ray Charles at 14, and he was 16. But he was like a hundred years older than me.

We’ve gone overboard on every Queen album. But that’s Queen.

Rap is poetry to music, like beatniks without beards and bongos.

One boyfriend told me that I loved myself too much… You can’t love yourself too much.

The show must go on.

I always knew I was a star, and now the rest of the world seems to agree with me.

I don’t try to be a sex bomb. I am one.

Playing the game, and unfortunately, playing the gangster game is very profitable.

I got a wife who likes expensive things, so she takes all the cash.

They’re here!

When you produce an album, you’re dealing with it theatrically. It has to have a structure, and the inner response to that is that the ear loves it.

Sick and perverted always appeals to me.

I’m as gay as a daffodil, my dear!

The worst thing you can do to a child, and I’ve seen it happen so many times, is the silver spoon.

No matter who you are, no matter what you did, no matter where you’ve come from, you can always change, become a better version of yourself.

What will I be doing in twenty years’ time? I’ll be dead, darling! Are you crazy?

I’m not a saint. I’m not an angel. I’m a human being.

If there’s such a thing as genius – I am one. And if there isn’t, I don’t care.

There’s nothing I’m embarrassed about.

People only get one chance to meet you, and if you’re not an arsehole, why give them the opportunity of thinking you are?

There’s the paradox of making pop music when you’re in your 50s. People weren’t meant to be doing that originally and yet they are. Mick Jagger [used to say] we’re not going to be doing Satisfaction when I’m in a wheelchair.

Music has healing power. It has the ability to take people out of themselves for a few hours.

The record company really pissed me off when they told me to lose weight. I couldn’t be bothered with looking a certain way. So I left the business. I don’t regret it.

When God took it, he accepted it; when he brought it back, he accepted it. That’s what’s happening with me.

Before you judge me, try hard to love me, look within your heart.
Then ask; have you seen my childhood ?

Apparently, Duran Duran is cool again…but, we always thought we were cool

If you’re going to have a cabin fever, have a big cabin, you know.

I lucked out when I started to sing. I’d already experienced failing at everything else.

I’m self-made. I always wanted to make myself a better person because I was not educated. But that was my dream – to have class.

… The second time you see something is really the first time. You need to know how it ends before you can appreciate how beautifully it’s put together from the beginning.

When we started, a lot of bands sounded really different from one another.

We competed against each other for the sexiest girls. And, I won!

My son looks more like George Harrison than I do.

More than art, more than literature, music is universally accessible.

When I was a tiny tot, we only had one record player in the house, so there was either Genesis on it or the Jungle Book or The Beatles as well, and various other things.

You do an interview and they ask you if your guitar is a phallic symbol. Fuck off. I don’t hold it because it’s shaped like a cock, I hold it because it’s a guitar.

You have to remember, videos were on the rise back when we did ‘Take On Me.’

I’m as good as anyone. Even Prince.

Sex? I’d rather have a nice cup of tea.

I’m not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman. I’m living on.

A lot of people are afraid to say what they want. That’s why they don’t get what they want.

When I look back, I didn’t take care of myself at all.

God, I’m just a fat bald guy, 60 years old, singing the blues, you know?

Dying is easy, it’s living that scares me to death.

I’m kidding about having only a few dollars. I might have a few dollars more.

Fame for fame’s sake is toxic – some people want that, with no boundaries. It’s unhealthy.

I’m not a person for sitting on beaches. What would I do?

You’re not the only one who’s made mistakes, but they’re the only things that you can truly call your own.

They wouldn’t play my records on American radio because I had spiky hair. They said, ‘Punk rock doesn’t sell advertising, it won’t make any money.’

I just like the company of beautiful women. I have a weakness in that department.

Roads? Where we’re going we don’t need… Roads!

That’s just a part of being an artist: you can’t write great stuff all the time, because if you did, then you’d be inhuman. The human side of people is that sometimes they fail.

Wax on, wax off.

Ha, ha, ha. That’s not a knife. That’s a knife!

I’m not bad. I’m just drawn that way.

I love it when someone insults me. That means that I don’t have to be nice anymore.

If your world doesn’t allow you to dream, move to one where you can.

You stick your head above the crowd and attract attention and sometimes somebody will throw a rock at you. That’s the territory. You buy the land, you get the Indians.

I’m tough, I’m ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.

I laugh at myself. I don’t take myself completely seriously. I think that’s another quality that people have to hold on to… you have to laugh, especially at yourself.

I like all music. The only music I don’t like is bad music.

There’s no religion but sex and music.

They drew first blood, not me.

If you closed your eyes you would swear it was Ray Charles. Musically he was like an old man in a boy’s skin.

Money can’t buy you happiness, but it can buy you a yacht big enough to pull up right alongside it.

I’m into paradoxes. I wanted to make an album about them, but the group told me I was a pretentious fart. They were right.

The ’80s was a really creative and brave period. Remember, it was a period of ultraconservatism, and so you needed brave people to push ahead like that.

Secretly, I wanted to look like Jimi Hendrix, but I could never quite pull it off.

The day before my 16th birthday I got my guitar.

I would like to be able to do a song with Ray Charles, before we both get too old.

The one thing that can solve most of our problems is dancing.

I’m just a musical prostitute, my dear.

In Genesis we saw ourselves as song-writers. After Peter Gabriel left I was the first to say: ‘It’s OK – we can just do instrumentals.’

I don’t want to be a full-time member of Pink Floyd all my life.

Queen has always been my favorite band. Freddie is the greatest singer, ever, is the way I look at it. The other thing about Queen for me is they embraced so many different styles.

I don’t care what stage or what reason, as long as we’re playing.

One of the benefits of playing to small audiences in small clubs for a few years is that you’re allowed to fail.

It was a really interesting time in New York in the late 70s and early 80s, and the music scene was really, really interesting because you didn’t have to be a virtuoso to make music, it was more about your desire to express things.

James Bond has a license to kill, rockstars have a license to be outrageous. Rock is about grabbing people’s attention.

I’ve been touring now since about ’68.

I do love beauty. I love beautiful tilings. I grow orchids and collect butterflies. But when it comes to relationships, you have to find the person inside.

We became such darlings of a certain type of media. We became a package; we became easy to sell: these three golden nuggets that could pour out all the goods. It was all exposure in an almost violent way.

Nowadays New-York is not the exciting place it used to be. It still has great energy; I still put my finger in the socket. But it doesn’t feel alive, cracking with that synergy between the art world and music world and fashion world that was happening in the 80s. A lot of people died.

Women are from Mars, men have a penis

All you needed was a couple of instruments and a few chords and you could be on an indie label.

We wanted to come to London because it’s the hardest place to make it.

There can be only one.

You’re full of insecurities in your 20s – most of the time your heart’s being broken, you’re having a difficult time finding out who the hell you are, and I was trying to do that in the full glare of the public.

Nobody puts Baby in a corner.

When you look like a cartoon, you act like a cartoon.

I will go out of my way to avoid the shopping crowds and the extreme consumerism – I hate all that.

Music became a healer for me.

Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you, following you right on up until you die.

We are Duran Duran, and we are designed to make you party!

Everything in moderation – that’s what I live by.

I’ve always thought that a big laugh is a really loud noise from the soul saying “Ain’t that the truth”.

I can choose to be a serious musician, but the sex symbol part is not up to me.

Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die!

‘You Are So Beautiful,’ I think, is probably the, you know, the strongest tune I ever did in just the simplicity in it.

It’s nice to get a response from the artists that I cover.

To give someone a piece of your heart, is worth more than all the wealth in the world.

Kiss had become culture, had become iconic… Nobody takes Bono’s face and tattoos it on their ass.

I don’t think you can live as long as I have in rock n’ roll and not take a few hard knocks.

One more hit and we’re the most successful girl group of all time. We’ll pass The Supremes. Sad, isn’t it?

I am serious. And don’t call me Shirley.

You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends.

If you respond to pop music as an older person, then it’s your game. But this business has a tremendously visual focus.

Artists are notoriously snooty and suspicious of anything coming from the business community.

The key to this project is the giant laser, which was invented by the noted Cambridge physicist, Dr. Parsons. So therefore, it is fitting to call it: “The Alan Parsons Project”

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tanhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die.

It’s fundamental that what we do only exists in our own universe. When you like Pet Shop Boys, you are in our world.

I definitely prefer being a lover than a fighter.

I like to be surrounded by splendid things.

I really wanted the first record to be different from what I’d done with Genesis, so we were trying to do things in different styles.

You shouldn’t be in the music business if you’re posing.

I’m starting with the man in the mirror.

I absolutely refuse to reveal my age. What am I – a car?

Sometimes you struggle so hard to feed your family one way, you forget to feed them the other way, with spiritual nourishment. Everybody needs that.

I am a romantic, but I do put up a barrier around myself, so it is hard for people to get in and to know the real me.

Nobody puts Baby in a corner.

Rock and Roll: Music for the neck downwards.

Where words fail, music speaks.

I dress to kill, but tastefully.

Chart positions aren’t the be all and end all.

Interview? Oh don’t be ridiculous.

I like solitude. I like the anomalous life. I like a quiet life.

When I say I don’t have to write pop songs anymore, there’s no way I’m going to get on the radio at 60 years of age unless I’m doing a duet with Gaga or I was on ‘All of the Lights,’ which was a Kanye West record that managed to get on the radio.

If you’re unemployed in New York, you’re an artist. If you’re unemployed in LA, you’re an actor. In London, everyone’s unemployed so it doesn’t matter.

It’s good to be the king.

Welcome to the world of bullshit, my dear. You have arrived.

I have a wig for when I go outside among the regular folks, so they don’t feel uncomfortable because I have a Day-Glo color somewhere in my hair.

80s music sounds so 80s now. But in the 80s, it just sounded like music.

Does it mean this, does it mean that, that’s all anybody wants to know. I’d say what any decent poet would say if anyone dared ask him to analyze his work: if you see it, darling, then it’s there!

Possibly more famous for not doing anything than almost anyone else in the history of popular entertainment.

The Beatles saved the world from boredom.

I was never interested in being a rock star. I always wanted to be Boris Karloff.

Using music to promote hate seems to be the bastardisation of music to me.

My music is about a joyful experience. I’ve learned that if you can affect other people, you should.

There’s more good music being made now than ever before.

I think sometimes an artist can really lose sight of what made them popular in the first place.

My attitude is if fashion says it’s forbidden, I’m going to do it.

If you want to find somebody and you want to be married and you want to have children, don’t make it a rock star.

If everyone who had a gun just shot themselves, there wouldn’t be a problem.

Here’s Johnny!

I mean, the sound of an amplified guitar in a room full of people was so hypnotic and addictive to me, that I could cross any kind of border to get on there.

It’s not a concert you are seeing, it’s a fashion show.

I don’t like to relax. Show me a motherfucker that’s relaxed and I’ll show you a motherfucker that’s scared of success.

Lots of people think songs without singing is not a song. Tell Beethoven that and he’ll kick your ass!

As long as you hate, there will be people to hate.

Michael Jackson has a very good heart. He was crying when he was giving me the award, ’cause his mind went back over the early days.

When I’m hungry, I eat. When I’m thirsty, I drink. When I feel like saying something, I say it.

The music scene as I look at it today is a little different from when I was growing up. The percentages are roughly the same – 95 percent rubbish, 5 percent pure.

The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good.

When I left Genesis, I just wanted to be out of the music business. I felt like I was just in the machinery. We knew what we were going to be doing in 18 months or two years ahead. I just did not enjoy that.

Stupidity combined with arrogance and a huge ego will get you a long way.

I want to lead the Victorian life, surrounded by exquisite clutter.

Ninety percent of all music is always crap, and when too many people decide they’re going to have guitar bands, then ninety percent of them are going to be crap. It’s just a given law.

Hair is the first thing. And teeth the second. Hair and teeth. A man got those two things he’s got it all.

I don’t mean to sound big-headed but I honestly don’t think we’ve put a foot wrong in 20 years.

We knew we would make it and become very big.

I’m getting older; you realise you are on the countdown of what you are doing, so performing means more than it ever did to me.

The makeup is simply an extension of the personality and colors, clothing, makeup all express something.

Doing Made In Heaven was like assembling a jigsaw puzzle, but I wouldn’t have put my seal of approval on it if I hadn’t thought it was up to standard.

By the time I was five, I was a little diva.

No. Better research needed. Fire your research person. No fishnet stockings. Never. Not in this band.

Modern paintings are like women, you’ll never enjoy them if you try to understand them.

“Men want success and sex. Women want everything.”
Women

Love Comes Quickly is our favourite record ever, and it did really badly.

I’m beginning to think that you should only be allowed to serve two terms, before madness sets in.

The Heads were the only band on that scene that had a groove.

House music is about love, and lots of hip hop is about hate and intolerance, so in that respect, it’s not good at all.

Over the years, I’ve worked with just about everybody.

Some boys take a beautiful girl and hide her away from the rest of the world, I want to be the one to walk in the sun.

Listen, everyone is entitled to my opinion.

I’m a much better musician than astronomer. I think the world got the right choice.

In the ’80s, I was the only game in town, I was the only one getting that kind of exposure in any rotation on MTV. Now with internet culture it seems like everyone is doing music parodies. And they’re not all good!

I was really lucky that I came to puberty at a time when music and politics were completely intertwined.

Fancy being a bee, leading an incredible existence, all those flowers, designed just for you, incredible colours, some trip.

Actually, I hear a lot of rock music. My husband is a big rock fan.

Why not invest in the future of music, instead of building fortresses to preserve its past?

If you hand me a guitar, I’ll play the blues. That’s the place I automatically go.

If architecture is frozen music then music must be liquid architecture.

When I’m gone, people will no doubt remember me for Queen, but I would much rather be remembered for attempting to change the way we treat our fellow creatures.

We don’t make music – it makes us.

You make your mistakes to learn how to get to the good stuff.

Fame itself… doesn’t really afford you anything more than a good seat in a restaurant.

I think the only thing I would’ve ever been any good at was probably being a pub landlord. I’ve thought of that a couple of times.

No, I am your father.

Mick Jagger is one of the greatest athletes who ever lived, just for how much he puts into it onstage.

I wanted to prove the sustaining power of music.

I just play intuitively and work the same way in the studio. I don’t have any magical effects or anything that helps me to get my particular sound.

One of the most beneficial things I’ve ever learned is how to keep my mouth shut.

Yippee-ki-yay, mother fucker!

If you see it there, darling, then it’s there.

Who wants to live forever?

You need a bit more to be a pop star than just a good voice.

These are the sort of things that push you on in music – the curiosity, a passion for new ideas.

What happened to truth? Did it go out of style?

I’m definitely nostalgic about the music of my youth; The Clash and Fishbone and that whole music scene. I still have all that music to this day. There was some great music going on in the late 70s and 80s.

I never cared about money or fame, and I don’t care now. I follow the groove, and money always follows.

E.T. phone home.

For me, the focus are songs, which really get the audience moving.

I’d put a lot of work into playing guitar and was thinking I was pretty damn good. But Hendrix came along and destroyed everyone.

Cycling can be lonely, but in a good way. It gives you a moment to breathe and think, and get away from what you’re working on.

My hair used to be real long, and my parents were encouraged when I cut it. They thought I was going ‘straight,’ but I was just getting weirder – at least in their eyes. I was getting into the punk thing.

I have never thought about my sexuality being right or wrong. To me it has always been a case of finding the right person.

I’m not a snob ask anyone… Anyone that matters.

You should never take more than you give.

True genius does not fulfill expectations. True genius shatters it.

Music can’t change the world.

I had a massive ego. But that’s not such a bad thing… You consider yourself great because you want to be great.

I’ve just always been like this slowhand…like the arthritic guitar method.

We’d have made more, but I kept forgetting to write songs down.

The music industry is a matrix that is counter to what is natural and right.

Prince and I were just friends. I think he would have been happy to have had a relationship.

The whole point of being in this business and being blessed and being successful is that you’re able to do things for your friends or your family, which means that they can have something special in their lives, too.

I tried several times to get the song right. The tune and the chords that I started with, there really wasn’t anywhere else it could go. I stopped fighting it and let it take me away.

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