A classic song is timeless. You’ll never outlive a classic song.
Bitter Sweet Symphony is one of the greatest pieces of modern art created by anyone.
Can you imagine, you’re 22 years old, in the middle of America, you’ve got 12 Tibetan monks, fully robed, wanting to play football. It was amazing. I’ve got a letter from the Dalai Lama at home.
Fatherhood fundamentally changes a lot of your life, but it enriches you too. You join one of the biggest clubs in the world, you have empathy with a billion more people, on a lot of emotional levels.
I believe that you can do anything. I believe you can fly and I believe in astral travel, because, if I thought I was just going to walk around this place for the next 50 years, I don’t think I could exist.
I can’t stand nostalgia. I find it very empty.
I don’t see popularity as something to be afraid.
I don’t wanna be a heritage rock act.
I feel like I’m on a one-man mission. I’m here to use my tools and my gift to take them to a higher level.
I had the full paparazzi treatment. Hundreds of people following me, like the Pied Piper. I’m running into different shops, because they can’t go into the shops with their cameras. And being penned in the shop.
I love people calling me mad.
I probably suffered from a narcissistic disorder in some way. An urgent need to be known. The fear of being another tombstone outside Wigan.
I was destined at some point to be entertaining or to take people to some level.
I’d definitely say I’m a depressive, someone who suffers from depression.
I’m a blessed man. Ive been involved in and written songs that have this timeless quality.
I’m a firm believer the concert is the moment to either escape for a short time, be moved, be taken away, or celebrate your life for a short time.
I’m not some sort of mad-head because my dad died. But it does give a heightened awareness of time.
It doesn’t matter how fashion or politics changes, you’ll never change a classic song.
It’s easy for me to drift into two or three years of doing nothing.
I’ve still got a lot of heaviness, a lot of psychedelia, a lot of soul.
Kids don’t play the whole album anymore. Kids don’t even play the whole track.
Legend is an overused term, but in my case it’s totally appropriate.
Life’s about ego. So for someone to talk about my ego, as they are writing their piece about my ego, I’m wondering what they’re doing with their ego.
Most people from my generation are always too willing or too quick to package stuff up, they never give it any sense of history.
People are afraid to use the word spiritual.
Since I was a kid, I’ve wanted to be in the best rock ‘n’ roll band in the world.
The last thing in the world I wanted was for one of my songs to be used in a commercial. I’m still sick about it. But it could have been worse. If we didn’t fight for the song, ‘Symphony’ would have ended up in a cheeseburger ad and no one could ever have taken our record seriously again.
The Stones stuff was something that at one point in time was very significant, the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band in the world. But now they’re not even worth talking about. Keith Richards should just be playing in a blues band.
While the other kids played with Action Man, I was questioning life. I decided I was never going to be locked into a predictable existence. From that moment, I felt it was set in stone that when I left school, I’d be in a band and would make it.
Without music and creativity, I’d need other forms of therapy. But for me, the life process is the process of healing yourself.
You can’t run a record label with shareholder meetings.
