I like to have a peek, see what the audience is doing during the opening act, because it gives you a clue and gives you a good feeling of where you are - the air can be different in different places.
I enjoy doing different kinds of things. I just enjoy being not tied too much. I feel that I'm tied to myself as a kind of traditional musician and a singer, and the history that I have ties me down.
Quite often when I record a song, writing it and making a demo is the big thing and, after that, I think, how do I actually translate this into real life? A lot of the time I think I can't be bothered.
You don't have to bathe every day to look clean. It's just an illusion.
Boys were a very essential part of rock & roll. The girls were more onlookers.
You know, being in a rock band, you can't overdo the costume changes too much because everyone thinks, oh, that's not a real rock band. Look how many times he changes costumes. That's not rock. Rock's about going on in a T-shirt and staying in it and getting it all dirty. But that's not really my approach.
My father was furious with me, absolutely furious. I'm sure he wouldn't have been so mad if I'd have volunteered to join the army. Anything but this. He couldn't believe it. I agree with him: It wasn't a viable career opportunity.
I read the most extravagant things about people who suffer and depress because of things written about them.
A lot of times songs are very much of a moment, that you just encapsulate. They come to you, you write them, you feel good that day, or bad that day.
I would hate to say as a non-African-American person that it would be wrong for a black person to direct white people in a movie. Wouldn't that be awful of me to say that? The only sympathizing thing I might say for people that want to [grumble] is that a filmmaker should have an understanding for the place where the people you're portraying are coming from.
I don't like drugs. I think cocaine is a very bad, habit-forming bore. It's about the most boring drug ever invented.
Writing a song is like - you're writing a song all the time. It's just when it pops out. It's been there all the time. It's not something that suddenly you do it. It's always there. Suddenly, it's in the right mixture inside you to come out. Usually when you're writing on the piano or a guitar, you don't write in lyrics, on their own. To me it's very boring.
I wasn't taking so many drugs that it was messing up my creative processes. It was a very good period, 1968 - there was a good feeling in the air. It was a very creative period for everyone.
It's heartening to return to live music, heartening for people like me in a band. It's a very traditional thing to return to. It re-validates the original form that we fell in love with.
There's hundreds of different ways of writing songs.
Killing for ideas is the most dangerous form of killing at all. Being willing to die for your ideas rather than your country is another concept, but dying for an idea, like in religion, is absurd.
Polarization affects families and groups of friends. Its a paralyzing situation. A civil war of opinion.
I don't hate journalists. You can't hate a class of people. It's wrong to say that. But I do think they're a bit like poison. Never trust them. You can't trust them as a class of people. It's their job not to be trusted.
The Spice Girl Victoria Beckham has just published the story of her life. I confess that it is not in my reading table.
Samba rhythm is a great one to sing on, but it's also got some other suggestions in it, an undercurrent of being primitive - because it is a primitive African, South American, Afro-whatever-you-call-that rhythm. So to white people, it has a very sinister thing about it.
Biographies of British pop celebrities are terrible.
Thanks to everyone in Israel for the wonderful welcome. It was a great show and we'll remember it forever.
Americans are funny people: first you shock them, then they put you in a museum.
When we heard we were topping the bill over James Brown we couldn't believe it. We tried for two days to get it changed round - I mean you can't follow an act like that.
I was having a bit of trouble. I wasn't in a good relationship. Or I was in too many bad relationships. I had so many girlfriends at that point. None of them seemed to care they weren't pleasing me very much. I was obviously in with the wrong group.
