Music producers from the United Kingdom

"Did you plan your leads, or, for that matter, do you plan them now?"

"Tell me why, must I fall in love with you?"

"Layla, you got me on my knees. Layla, I'm begging, darling please. Layla, darling won't you ease my worried mind."

"Would you know my name if I saw you in heaven? Would it be the same If I saw you in heaven?"

"And I say, "Yes, you look wonderful tonight.""

"Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. [...] Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons out. Keep Britain white. I used to be into dope, now I'm into racism. It's much heavier, man. Fucking wogs, man. Fucking Saudis taking over London. Bastard wogs. Britain is becoming overcrowded, and Enoch [Powell] will stop it and send them all back. The black wogs and coons and Arabs and fucking Jamaicans and fucking ... don't belong here, we don't want them here. This is England, this is a white country, we don't want any black wogs and coons living here. We need to make clear to them they are not welcome. England is for white people, man. We are a white country. I don’t want fucking wogs living next to me with their standards. This is Great Britain, a white country. What is happening to us, for fuck's sake?"

"All I am certain of right now is that I don't want to go anywhere, and that's not bad for someone who always used to run."

"Music will always find its way to us, with or without business, politics, religion, or any other bullshit attached. Music survives everything, and like God, it is always present. It needs no help, and suffers no hindrance."

"In my lowest moments, the only reason I didn't commit suicide was that I knew I wouldn't be able to drink anymore if I was dead."

"[Unplugged] was also the cheapest to produce and required the least amount of preparation and work. But if you want to know what it actually cost me, go to Ripley and visit the grave of my son."

"You never told me he was that fucking good."

"He is a great person, as well as a great musician. And this guy sings like he was born down below Mississippi!"

"During the mid Sixties, [Clapton's] legendary performances with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and Cream established him as a pioneer of the modern electric blues and rock guitar. [...] Regardless of the musical format, Eric Clapton has always kept his brilliant blues-inspired guitar playing in the forefront, influencing the likes of Eddie Van Halen, Steve Lukather, Joe Satriani, Jonny Lang and countless others."

"An electric warrior reinvented as the modern icon of acoustic blues, Slowhand has the whole package: tone, technique, reverence for the source material, everything. Obviously, when one of the greatest guitarists of all time sits down to play you know you’re in for something special, but there’s something about the way Clapton affects the listener that sets him apart. His journey from young guitar god to elder blues statesman has been epic, and it’s inarguably his acoustic side that has propped up the second half of his career. Clapton is God? Maybe not, but he’s certainly all class."

"I think Clapton is brilliant. He's the only one who moved me. The only one who made me want to play the guitar."

"His fingers are directly wired to his soul."

"I had a Les Paul before Eric but I didn't have a Marshall. And when Eric got all of that together he was a delight to listen to. He really understood the blues."

"You shout in your sleep. Perhaps the price is just too steep. Is your conscience at rest if once put to the test? You awake with a start to just the beating of your heart. Just one man beneath the sky, Just two ears, just two eyes."

"You find your eyes are growing moist. All the fears never voiced say you have to make your final choice."

"Who are you and who am I To say we know the reason why Some are born, some men die, Beneath one infinite sky? There'll be war, there'll be peace, But everything one day will cease, All the iron turned to rust, All the proud men turned to dust, And so all things time will mend, So this song will end."

"Syd's story is a sad story romanticised by people who don't know anything about it. They've made it fashionable but it's just not that way."

"My technique is laughable at times. I have developed a style of my own, I suppose, which creeps around … I don't have to have too much technique for it. I've developed the parts of my technique that are useful to me. I'll never be a very fast guitar player. I don't really know what to say about my style. There's always a melodic intent in there."

"Roger doesn't have the right at present to tell me what to do with my life, although he believes that he does. And he'll not ruin my career, although lately he's been trying to."

"He had developed his own limited, or very simple style. He was never very keen on improving himself as a bass player and half the time I would play bass on the records because I would tend to do it quicker. Right back to those early records; I mean, at least half the bass on all recorded output is me anyway. … Rog used to come in and say, "Thank you very much" to me once in a while for winning him bass-playing polls."

"I've been in The Who, I've been in The Beatles and I've been in Pink Floyd! Top that!"

"Usually, in the studio, on this sort of thing ... you just go out and have a play over it, and see what comes, and it's usually — mostly — the first take that's the best one, and you find yourself repeating yourself thereafter."

"It's crazy that America gives such a paltry percentage of its GNP to the starving nations."

"The band? It's over. Reunited because of the good cause (Live 8), to get over the bad relationship, and not to have regrets."

"Where would rock and roll be without feedback?"

"Jimi Hendrix isn't as good as me!"

"Obviously, they're all a gang of idiots. But, you know... live and let live."

"I had a listen, I was intrigued … by this strange voice, and I went to her house, met her parents down in Kent, and she played me, it must have been forty or fifty songs, on tape, and I thought, I should try to do something. … We were making — Pink Floyd was making the Wish You Were Here album, and I think we had the record company people down at Abbey Road, in number 3, and I said to them "Do you want to hear something I've got? And they said "sure", so we found another room, and I played it to them, "The Man with the Child in His Eyes", and they said "Yep, thank you – we'll have it.""

"It is absolutely beautiful, isn't it? And its a sort of over two years before any of the other recordings she did. That is her singing at the age of 16, and having written those extraordinary lyrics — about whatever they're about."

"We want to spread this message of peace, and we want to raise the morale of the people who are defending their homeland there in Ukraine."

"Russia is not full of terrible people. It’s just that their leadership has gone so horribly wrong. ... A lot of the world is reacting in the right way. They are angry and they are frustrated. You can see and hear the frustration in the leaders of the other world’s countries. We can see it in the voice of your president, President Biden. He has let slip a couple of his feelings a couple of times over there. Other world leaders have done the same. And I think there’s a groundswell of opinion worldwide. This sort of thing shouldn’t be able to happen. It shouldn’t be able to be allowed. But we are in a world where still, here we are, a fifth of the way through the 21st century and still this obscene situation can happen. The mind boggles."

"In an era of showboating, Gilmour sounded like no one else: his playing was all about tone, texture and a kind of languid grandeur. The solos he pulled out for Pink Floyd’s Time, Money, Shine On You Crazy Diamond et al are, in a word, timeless."

"David Gilmour’s titanic playing on "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" has some of the most imitated feel and tone in history. Gilmour pays tribute to blues pioneers, particularly BB King, with his controlled feel and sublime behind-the-beat timing."

"David Gilmour laid down some of the tastiest solos of the decade. While Ritchie Blackmore set new standards for flash, Gilmour’s tasteful phrasing and sublime behind-the-beat feel showed the power of a few well-placed notes."

"His glorious fuzz tone, a silicon Fuzz Face boosted by a Colorsound Powerboost overdrive, is one of the most sought-after sounds in rock."

"If you'd have asked me that question, 9 months ago, well, I would have been able to say, to come to America, to have a number one hit in America, and to play Carnegie Hall, to play the Palladium, to play in front of the Queen, and all that. ... The things we've done, they were our ambitions, say 9 months ago."

"If there's a God, I want to see Him. It's pointless to believe in something without proof, and Krishna consciousness and meditation are methods where you can actually obtain God perception. In that way you can see, hear and play with God. Perhaps this may sound weird, but God is really there next to you."

"From the Hindu perspective, each soul is divine. All religions are branches of one big tree. It doesn't matter what you call Him just as long as you call. Just as cinematic images appear to be real but are only combinations of light and shade, so is the universal variety a delusion. The planetary spheres, with their countless forms of life, are naught but figures in a cosmic motion picture. One's values are profoundly changed when he is finally convinced that creation is only a vast motion picture and that not in, but beyond, lies his own ultimate reality."

"My idea in "My Sweet Lord," because it sounded like a "pop song," was to sneak up on them a bit. The point was to have the people not offended by "Hallelujah," and by the time it gets to "Hare Krishna," they're already hooked, and their foot's tapping, and they're already singing along "Hallelujah," to kind of lull them into a sense of false security. And then suddenly it turns into "Hare Krishna," and they will all be singing that before they know what's happened, and they will think, "Hey, I thought I wasn't supposed to like Hare Krishna!""

"I always felt at home with Krishna. You see it was already a part of me. I think it's something that's been with me from my previous birth .... I'd rather be one of the devotees of God than one of the straight, so-called sane or normal people who just don't understand that man is a spiritual being, that he has a soul."

"It just annoyed me that people got so into the Beatles. "Beatles, Beatles, Beatles." It's not that I don't like talking about them. I've never stopped talking about them. It's "Beatles this, Beatles that, Beatles, Beatles, Beatles, Beatles." Then in the end, it's like "Oh, sod off with the Beatles," you know?"

"I had no ambition when I was a kid other than to play guitar and get in a rock 'n' roll band. I don't really like to be the guy in the white suit at the front. Like in the Beatles, I was the one who kept quiet at the back and let the other egos be at the front."

"He was annoyed 'cause I didn't say that he'd written one line of this song "Taxman." But I also didn't say how I wrote two lines of "Come Together" or three lines of "Eleanor Rigby," you know? I wasn't getting into any of that. I think, in the balance, I would have had more things to be niggled with him about than he would have had with me!"

"Rap music is just computerised crap. I listen to Top of the Pops and after three songs I feel like killing someone."

"I felt in love, not with anything or anybody in particular but with everything."

"If everybody who had a gun just shot themselves there wouldn’t be a problem."

"You can be standing right in front of the truth and not necessarily see it, and people only get it when they’re ready to get it."

"That's what the whole Sixties Flower-Power thing was about: "Go away, you bunch of boring people.""

"I'd thought it would be something like King's Road [London], only more. Somehow I expected them all to own their own little shops. I expected them to all be nice and clean and friendly and happy … (on the contrary, I discovered them to be) hideous, spotty little teenagers."

"I don't mind anybody dropping out of anything, but it's the imposition on somebody else I don't like. The moment you start dropping out and then begging off somebody else to help you, then it's no good. It doesn't matter what you are as long as you work. It doesn't matter if you chop wood as long as you chop and keep chopping. Then you get what's coming to you. You don't have to drop out. In fact, if you drop out you put yourself further away from the goal of life than if you were to keep working."

"I got tired of people saying "But what can I do?" Also, the reluctance of the press to report the full details created the need to bring attention to it. So the song "Bangla Desh" was written specifically to get attention to the war prior to the concert."

"Even now I still meet waiters in Bengali restaurants who say, "When we were in the jungle fighting, it was great to know somebody out there was thinking of us.""

"The money we raised was secondary. The main thing was, we spread the word and helped get the war ended ... What we did show was that musicians and people are more humane than politicians."

"Try to realize it's all within yourself, No one else can make you change. And to see you're really only very small And life flows in within you and without you."

"Without going out of your door, You can know all things on earth. Without looking out of your window you could know the ways of heaven. The farther one travels. the less one knows, the less one really knows."

"If you're listening to this song You may think the chords are going wrong But they're not We just wrote it like that"

"...the more I learn the less I know..."

"Do what you want to do, And go where you're going to. Think for yourself 'Cause I won't be there with you."

"I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping While my guitar gently weeps."

"I don't know why nobody told you how to unfold your love I don't know how someone controlled you They bought and sold you."

"I look at the world and I notice it’s turning. While my guitar gently weeps. With every mistake we must surely be learning, Still my guitar gently weeps."

"I don't know how you were diverted You were perverted too. I don't know how you were inverted No one alerted you."

"Little darling, It's been a long cold lonely winter. Little darling, It feels like years since it's been here. Here comes the sun..."

"Little darling I feel that ice is slowly melting Little darling It seems like years since it's been clear Here comes the sun..."

"Something in the way she moves attracts me like no other lover."

"If I grow up I'll be a singer, wearing rings on every finger Not worrying what they or you say, I'll live and love and maybe someday Who knows baby you may comfort me."

"I really want to see you, Really want to be with you, Really want to see you lord, But it takes so long, my lord."

"My sweet Lord (Hallelujah) Hm, my Lord (Hallelujah) My, my, my Lord (Hallelujah) I really want to know you (Hallelujah) Really want to go with you (Hallelujah) Really want to show you Lord (ahh) That it won't take long, my Lord (Hallelujah) Hmm (Hallelujah) My sweet Lord (Hallelujah) My, my, Lord (Hallelujah) Hm, my Lord (Hare Krishna) My, my, my Lord (Hare Krishna)"

"Bangladesh, Bangladesh Where so many people are dying fast And it sure looks like a mess I've never seen such distress. Now won't you lend your hand, try to understand? Relieve the people of Bangladesh."

"Give me love, give me peace on earth, Give me light, give me life, keep me free from birth, Give me hope, help me cope, with this heavy load, Trying to, touch and reach you with, heart and soul."

"It all began with the three wise men, followed a star took them to Bethelehem, and made it heard throughout the land — born was the leader of man. All going down to see the Lord Jesus."

"We’re confident people will take to us, because although the camp image has already been established by people like Bowie and Bolan we are taking it to another level. The concept of Queen is to be regal and majestic. Glamour is part of us and we want to be dandy. We want to shock and be outrageous instantly."

"Gay as a daffodil."

"I hate pockets in trousers … By the way, I do not wear a hose. My hose is my own. No coke bottle, nothing stuffed down there."

"Jimi Hendrix is very important. He's my idol. He sort of epitomizes, from his presentation on stage, the whole works of a rock star. There's no way you can compare him. You either have the magic or you don't. There's no way you can work up to it. There's nobody who can take his place."

"Liza, in terms of sheer talent, just oozes with it. She has sheer energy and stamina, which she gets across the stage, and the way she delivers herself to the public is a good influence. There is a lot to learn from her"

"Led Zeppelin is the greatest. Robert Plant is one of the most original vocalists of our time. As a rock band they deserve the kind of success they're getting."

"All my lovers asked me why they couldn't replace Mary, but it's simply impossible. The only friend I've got is Mary and I don't want anybody else. To me, she was my common-law wife. To me, it was a marriage. We believe in each other, that's enough for me."

"I just like having fun. It's a very good release, rock music, but you know you say that I am a different person on stage and that same thing could be said of anyone going out to do his job. It's my work, and I'm very serious about it, getting it right - when we began, we approached it the way we did because we were not prepared to be out-of-work musicians, ever. We said either take it on as a serious commodity or don't do it at all."

"I like people to go away from a Queen show feeling fully entertained, having had a good time. I think Queen songs are pure escapism, like going to see a good film - after that, they can go away and say that was great, and go back to their problems. I don't want to change the world with our music. There are no hidden messages in our songs, except for some of Brian's."

"Listen, if you guys wanna move around and shift your asses a little, it's okay. It's okay by us, right? You can take all your clothes off if you like too, doesn't matter... Fuck off! [laughs]"

"Hello everybody! Hey hey hey! Okay! Do you know it's not... it's not very often that we do shows in daylight. And I fucking wish we'd done before, I can see you all now. And there's some beauties here tonight, I can tell you!"

"I would have loved to have been on the Band Aid record but I only heard about it when I was in Germany. I don’t know if they would have had me on the record anyway, because I’m a bit old. I’m just an old slag who gets up every morning, scratches his head and wonders what he wants to fuck."

"I'm possessed by love — but isn't everybody? Most of my songs are love ballads and things to do with sadness and torture and pain. In terms of love, you're not in control and I hate that feeling. I seem to write a lot of sad songs because I'm a very tragic person. But there's always an element of humour at the end."

"Montserrat Caballé is sensational. She has that same kind of emotion as Aretha Franklin. The way she delivers a song is so very natural. It's a very different gift."

"You can have everything in the world and still be the loneliest man. And that is the most bitter type of loneliness, success has brought me world idolisation and millions of pounds. But it's prevented me from having the one thing we all need: A loving, ongoing relationship."

"Can you imagine how terrible it is when you've got everything and you're still desperately lonely? That is awful beyond words. I'm so powerful on stage that I seem to have created a monster. When I'm performing I'm an extrovert, yet inside I'm a completely different man."

"I can’t win. Love is Russian roulette for me. No one loves the real me inside. they're all in love with my fame, my stardom. I fall in love far too quickly and end up getting hurt all the time. I've got scars all over. But I can't help myself because basically I'm a softie I have this hard, macho shell — which I project on stage but there's a much softer side. too, which melts like butter."

"Our love affair ended in tears but a deep bond grew out of it, and that's something nobody can take away from us. It's unreachable … All my lovers ask me why they can't replace her, but it's simply impossible. I don't feel jealous of her lovers because. of course, she has a life to lead, and so do I. Basically, I try to make sure she's happy with whoever she's with and she tries to do the same for me. We look after each other and that's a wonderful form of love. I might have all the problems in the world, but I have Mary and that gets me through."

"This next song is only dedicated to beautiful people here tonight. That means all of you. Thank you for coming along... and making this a great occasion."

"You know something? There's been a lot of rumors lately about a certain band called Queen. The rumors are that... The rumors are that we're gonna split up. What do you think? [audience replies "No!"] [Pointing to his posterior] They're talking from here! [audience replies "Yes"!] My apologies, but I say what I want. You know what I mean? So forget those rumors. We’re gonna stay together until we fucking well die, I’m sure of it. I keep — I must tell you — I keep wanting to leave, but they won’t let me. Also, I suppose we’re not... We're not bad for four aging queens, are we? Really, what do you think?"

"Following the enormous conjecture in the press over the last two weeks, I wish to confirm that I have been tested HIV positive and have AIDS. I felt it correct to keep this information private to date to protect the privacy of those around me. However, the time has come now for my friends and fans around the world to know the truth and I hope that everyone will join with my doctors and all those worldwide in the fight against this terrible disease. My privacy has always been very special to me and I am famous for my lack of interviews. Please understand this policy will continue."

"I lost somebody who I thought was my eternal love … When he died I felt we'd had a marriage. We'd lived our vows. We'd done it for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health. You could never have let go of Freddie unless he died — and even then it was difficult."

"The difference between Freddie and almost all the other rock stars was that he was selling the voice."

"Freddie Mercury was a huge source of inspiration to me as a child. I religiously attended Queen's concerts year after year. This is a sad day."

"I haven't felt the excitement of listening to as well as creating music along with reading and writing for too many years now. I feel guilty beyond words about these things. For example, when we're backstage and the lights go out and the manic roar of the crowds begins, it doesn't affect me the way in which it did for Freddy [sic] Mercury who seemed to love, relish in the love and adoration from the crowd, which is something I totally admire and envy."

"When we lost Freddie, we not only lost a great personality, a man with a great sense of humour, a true showman, but we lost probably the best. The best virtuoso rock 'n' roll singer of all time. He could sing anything in any style. He could change his style from line to line and, God, that's an art. And he was brilliant at it."

"My tribute really was "The Show Must Go On." There's a lot in there. I remember writing this line — "my soul is painted like the wings of butterflies" — and I brought it to him one morning, a little worried about what he would think of it. I said, "Do you think that's okay? Can you sing that?" And he went, "Darling, I can sing that and I will give it my all." Because he knew what it was all about and it didn't need to be said."

"If I didn't have Freddie Mercury's lyrics to hold on to as a kid, I don't know where I would be. It taught me about all forms of music. It would open my mind. I never really had a bigger teacher in my whole life."

"We were very close friends, he was a very special person to me. Freddie was probably the most creative individual I ever met, and he was really fun. He had a great zest for life. He was also very unselfish and very caring. He put himself out to work with me and it was a phenomenal experience."

"I adored Freddie Mercury and Queen had a hit called Radio Gaga. That's why I love the name. Freddie was unique - one of the biggest personalities in the whole of pop music. He was not only a singer but also a fantastic performer, a man of the theatre and someone who constantly transformed himself. In short: a genius."

"Freddie Mercury was - and remains - my biggest influence. The combination of his sarcastic approach to writing lyrics and his 'I don't give a fuck' attitude really inspired my music.”"

"I’m a Freddie Mercury fan. (In response to an interviewer backstage at a Queen concert at the LA Forum, who asked: Can I tell my viewers that Michael Jackson is a Queen fan?)"

"Every band should study Queen at Live Aid. If you really feel like that barrier is gone, you become Freddie Mercury. I consider him the greatest frontman of all time. Like, it's funny? you'd imagine that Freddie was more than human, but … You know how he controlled Wembley Stadium at Live Aid in 1985? He stood up there and did his vocal warm ups with the audience. Something that intimate, where they realize, 'Oh yeah, he's just a f***ing dude."

"What I dug about him so much is he was completely uninhibited as a performer. He just didn't care. He would just go out and wear what he wanted — nothing mattered. He wasn't afraid. As a young performer, that's what you aspire to:to be able to not care. The more you restrict yourself within the confines of an established art form like jazz, when you become successful at it, it becomes more and more difficult to be uninhibited, because you like the success, you like what's happening to you."

"Freddie Mercury was one of those guys who didn't care. That's extremely rare, I think, When you couple that with his musical abilities, well, I wouldn't say he was the greatest piano player in the world, but he was certainly intensely musical. And his vocals; there's a guy I wouldn't want to have a cutting contest with as a singer. He had just silly ability. When you listen to his vibrato, it's erratic. That's just talent, straight-up talent and creativity. That's ridiculous. Imagine what he would have been able to do if he had been trained. It wouldn't have affected his spontaneity or creativity. I think that's a big myth, this idea that when you become educated, it takes away from the soulful part. That's just once-in-a-century talent."

"Of all the more theatrical rock performers, Freddie took it further than the rest... he took it over the edge. And of course, I always admired a man who wears tights. I only saw him in concert once and as they say, he was definitely a man who could hold an audience in the palm of his hand."

"My lifetime role model and hero is Freddie Mercury of Queen. His songwriting skills, I cannot even approach, but his showmanship, I learned it from videos. I’m No. 1 in the U.K. right now, so if I have any chance to go there, I want to meet Queen and to tell them how much I got inspired by their music."

"You say I'm the greatest, bound for glory. Well the word is out and I learned. I got the latest side of the story: You're pulling out before you get burned."

"And Harry doesn't mind if he doesn't make the scene He's got a daytime job, he's doing alright. He can play the honky tonk like anything, Saving it up for Friday night. With the Sultans... with the Sultans of Swing."

"Stepping out to Angellucci's for my coffee beans Checking out the movies and the magazines Waitress she watches me crossing from the Barocco Bar I'm getting a pickup for my steel guitar I saw you walking out Shaftesbury Avenue Excuse me for talking I wanna marry you This is the seventh heaven street to me Don't be so proud You're just another angel in the crowd And I'm walking in the wild west end Walking with your wild best friend And my conductress on the number nineteen She was a honey Pink toenails and hands all dirty with money Greasy hair, easy smile Made me feel nineteen for a while"

"Lady writer on the TV She had all the brains and the beauty. The picture does not fit You talked to me when you felt like it. Just the way that her hair fell down around her face Then I recall my fall from grace Another time, another place."

"Getting crazy on the Waltzers, but it's the life that I choose. Sing about the sixblade, sing about the switchback and a torture tattoo. And I been riding on a ghost train where the cars they scream and slam, And I don't know where I'll be tonight but I'd always tell you where I am."

"A love struck Romeo, sings a street-suss serenade; Laying everybody low, with a love song that he made. Finds a convenient street light, steps out of the shade He says something like, "You and me babe, how about it?""

"Juliet says, "Hey, it's Romeo. You nearly give me a heart attack." He's underneath the window; she's singing, "Hey, la, my boyfriend's back. You shouldn't come around here singing up at people like that. Anyway what you gonna do about it?""

"Juliet, the dice was loaded from the start And I bet, then you exploded in my heart And I forget, I forget the movie song When you gonna realize it was just that the time was wrong? Juliet. We come up on different streets, they both were streets of shame Both dirty, both mean, yes, and the dream was just the same And I dreamed your dream for you and now your dream is real How can you look at me as if I was just another one of your deals?"

"When you can fall for chains of silver, you can fall for chains of gold You can fall for pretty strangers and the promises they hold You promised me everything, you promised me thick and thin, yeah. Now you just say, "Oh, Romeo, yeah. You know, I used to have a scene with him.""

"I seen a girl on a one way corridor Stealing down a wrong way street For all the world like an urban toreador She had wheels on her feet Well the cars do the usual dances Same old cruise and the curbside crawl But the roller girl she's taking chances They just love to see her take them all No fears alone at night she's sailing through the crowd In her ears the phones are tight and the music's playing loud"

"Hallelujah here she comes queen rollerball Om Shanti what can I say don't care at all You know she used to have to wait around She used to be the lonely one But now that she can skate around town She's the only one"

"She gets rock n roll, a rock n roll station And a rock n roll dream. She's making movies on location. She don't know what it means. But the music make her wanna be the story. And the story was whatever was the song, what it was. Rollergirl don't worry. D.J. plays the movies all night long."

"She gets the sun in the daytime Perfume in the dusk And she comes out in the night time With the honeysuckle musk Because she smells just like a rose And she tastes just like a peach She got me walking where the wildlife goes I'd do anything to reach her And she was made in heaven Heaven's in the world"

"A long time ago came a man on a track Walking thirty miles with a sack on his back And he put down his load Where he thought it was the best He made a home in the wilderness He built a cabin and a winter store And he plowed up the ground by the cold lake shore And the other travelers came walking down the track And they never went further, no They never went back Yes, and they say we're gonna have to pay what's owed We're gonna have to reap from some seed that's been sowed"

"Well, I'd sooner forget, but I remember those nights Yeah, life was just a bet on a race between the lights You had your head on my shoulder Your hand in my hair Now you act a little colder Like you don't seem to care"

"You get to meet all sorts in this line of work Treachery and treason, there's always an excuse for it And when I find the reason, I still can't get used to it And what have you got at the end of the day? What have you got to take away? A bottle of whisky and a new set of lies"

"The caretaker was crucified for sleeping at his post They're refusing to be pacified, it's him they blame the most. The watchdog's got rabies, the foreman's got the fleas. And everyone's concerned about Industrial Disease. There's panic on the switchboard, tongues are tied in knots. Some come out in sympathy, some come out in spots. Some blame the management, some blame the employees. And everybody knows it's the Industrial Disease."

"Two men say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong."

"It takes love over gold And mind over matter To do what you do that you must When the things that you hold Can fall and be shattered Or run through your fingers like dust"

"I'm tired of being in love and being all alone When you're so far away from me. I'm tired of making out on the telephone Because you're so far away from me."

"Now look at them yo-yo's, that's the way you do it You play the guitar on the MTV. That ain't workin', that's the way you do it. Money for nothin' and chicks for free. Now that ain't workin', that's the way you do it Lemme tell ya them guys ain't dumb. Maybe get a blister on your little finger; Maybe get a blister on your thumb."

"Here comes Johnny singing oldies, goldies Be-Bop-A-Lula, Baby What I Say Here comes Johnny singing I Gotta Woman Down in the tunnels, trying to make it pay. He got the action, he got the motion Oh yeah the boy can play. Dedication, devotion Turning all the night time into the day."

"All the late night bargains have been struck Between the satin beaus and their belles. Prehistoric garbage trucks Have the city to themselves Echoes and roars, dinosaurs They're all doing the monster mash. And most of the taxis, most of the whores Are only taking calls for cash.I don't know how it happened It all took place so quick. But all I can do is hand it to you And your latest trick."

"Why worry? There should be laughter after pain. There should be sunshine after rain. These things have always been the same. So why worry now?"

"Through these fields of destruction Baptisms of fire I've witnessed your suffering As the battles raged higher And though they hurt me so bad In the fear and alarm You did not desert me My brothers in arms."

"But it's written in the starlight And every line in your palm We're fools to make war On our brothers in arms."

"A three-chord symphony crashes into space The moon is hanging upside down I don't know why it is I'm still on the case It's a ravenous town And you still refuse to be traced Seems to me such a waste And every victory has a taste that's bittersweet"

"If we can't get along we oughta be apart And I'm wondering where'd you get that cold, cold heart Set me free - sign my release I'm tired of being the villain of the peace"

"Sometimes you're the windshield Sometimes you're the bug Sometimes it all come together baby Sometimes you're a fool in love Sometimes you're the Louisville Slugger baby Sometimes you're the ball Sometimes it all come together Sometimes you're gonna lose it all"

"Last time I was sober, man I felt bad Worst hangover that I ever had. It took six hamburgers and scotch all night Nicotine for breakfast just to put me right. ’Cause if you wanna run cool, If you wanna run cool, If you wanna run cool, you got to run On heavy, heavy fuel."

"Oh the iron will and the iron hand In England's green and pleasant land No music for the shameful scene That night they said it had even shocked the queen"

"I can see what you're looking to find In the smile on my face In my peace of mind In my state of grace I send what I can To the man from the ministry He's a part of heaven's plan And he talks to me Now I send what I can to the man With the diamond ring"

"I wonder if there's no forever No walking hand in hand Down a yellow brick road To never never land These days I get to where I'm going Make it there eventually Follow the trail of breadcrumbs To where I'm meant to be ... When I think about us I see the picture that we made The picture to remind us True love will never fade."

"I worked the rowdies and daytrippers Now and then I think of you Any which way we're all shufflin' Forward in the queue They'd like to move my operation They'd like to get me off the pier And I dream I'm on a steamer Pullin' out of here"

"MacIntyre's teaching us waltzing Out on the gymnasium floor McIntyre's out of the army You'll be slippered if you get him wrong McIntyre's din booms loud in the gym And we've only got a little short song We've only got a little short song"

"And it's one, two, three, two, two we're all a disgrace McIntyre tore us apart And we dance with ourselves when we'd all found a space Waltzing with fear in our hearts"

"When it's pop goes the weasel Let go of the easel You don't want This rickety rackety life It's seat of the trousers It's all sink or swim, son..."

"These are not my decisions Flaming visions Ringing expressions The clamouring voice It's volcanic desire The unquenchable fire It isn't a question Of having the choice Anyway, now I'm old But if you won't be told If you've been created To answer the call All passion and lust Is going to end in the dust But you'll hang on some Government gallery wall"

"You must go, forget it Let it all go, let it all go Go, forget it, let it all go"

"Are you home from the sea, my soul balladeer You've been away roaming far away from here weathered a storm, your heart unafraid crossed every ocean in the boat that you made.... You're a light in the dark, a beacon of hope and strong as a sea boat, strong as a rope. And the vagabond wind, whispers over the bay and the songs and the laughter, are carried away in the sky."

"I wonder wonder why the wonder falls I wonder why the wonder falls on me I wonder wonder why the wonder falls With everything I touch and hear and see"

"It started when i heard your song of love Pouring down like honey from above I started to spin, i started to move Just like a needle that is sticking through the same old groove"

"I leaned right over to kiss your stoney book A little jealous of the ships with whom you flirt A billion lovers with their cameras Snap to look and in my fantasy I sail beneath your skirt"

"Everybody eats something But you won't eat me You won't get me on your plate Or have me over for tea Everybody lives somewhere Mud hut or igloo But what I got is the hottest spot And it's away from you"

"Now I lay me down to sleep Knowing that your lenses peep Now I eat my daily bread And into the tape spool I'll be fed"

"It's in the order of their hedgerows It's in the way their curtains open and close It's in the look they give you down their nose All part of decency's jigsaw I suppose Sunday church and they look fetching Saturday night saw him retching over our fence Bang the wall for me to turn down I can see them with their stern frown As they dispense the kind of look that says they're Perfect."

"And all the world is football shaped It's just for me to kick in space And I can see, hear, smell, touch, taste And I've got one, two, three, four, five senses working overtime trying to take this all in I've got one, two, three, four, five senses working overtime trying to taste the difference 'tween a lemon and a lime pain and pleasure And the church bells softly chime."

"People will always be tempted to wipe their feet on anything with 'welcome' written on it."

"For a heart without love is a song with no words And a tune to which no one is listening So your heart must give love and you'll find that You shine like rain on the leaves you'll be glistening."

"Other lands became a larder full of all the good things All we had to do was go and take Blood the colour of the rain that grew our wicked harvest Black the colour icing on our cake"

"We stole their babes and mothers, chiefs and braves Although we held the whip, you knew we were The real slaves To alchemy, human alchemy."

"Now that I'm out and I'm shouting in doorways Freed from a love more like murder I should be singing but in liberation Feel like a ship with no rudder."

"I say I like your coat Her thank-you tugs my heart afloat I nearly didn't hear for Seagulls screaming kiss her, kiss her"

"Will you tell them about that far off and mythical land And how a child to the virgin came? Will you tell them that the reason why we murdered Everything upon the surface of the world Is so we can stand right up and say we did it in his name?"

"Reign of blows cascading down upon your shoulders Far too many men dressed up as soldiers The lamb is brought to the ground Under the weight of the Crown A crown of thorns and dark deeds The swastika and the hammer and sickle Are symbols that reap only weeds"

"Ballet for a rainy day Silent film of melting miracle play Dancing out there through my window To the backdrop of a slow descending grey"

"The man who sailed around his soul From East to West, from pole to pole With ego as his drunken captain Greed, the mutineer, had trapped all reason in the hold"

"Dear God, sorry to disturb you, but... I feel that I should be heard loud and clear. We all need a big reduction in amount of tears And all the people that you made in your image, See them fighting in the street 'Cause they can't make opinions meet about God, I can't believe in you."

"Well I don’t know how many pounds make up a ton, Of all the nobel prizes that I’ve never won, And I may be the mayor of simpleton, But I know one thing, And that’s I love you."

"I believe the printed word is more than sacred Beyond the gauge of good or bad The human right to let your soul fly free and naked Above the violence of the fearful and sad"

"Children thrown from heaven see the peacock's jealous tremble stars congeal into instructions showing how the sky is opened and spread down like a bedsheet"

"I had a dream where the car is reduced to a fossil I had a dream where the car is reduced to a fossil Take a packet of seeds, take yourself out to play I want to see a river of orchids where we had a motorway"

"I'd smile so much my face would crack in two Then you could fix it with your kissing glue I'd like that Yes, I'd like that"

"Now that I can see it's the queen's new clothes Now that I can hear all your poison prose Now that I can talk with my tongue unfroze I'm not so sure of Santa or the buck tooth fairy There are no words for me inside your dictionary"

"Brain gets bent, heart gets broken You can't jump off once the pages turn School is out but never over That's the only lesson you can learn"

"I like the natural sound of a room. All the rooms have their own sound, so it's a matter of putting it where you like and seeing what it sounds like."

"At the end of the day I have to please myself. And I've made a record to please myself."

"Midnight on the water I saw the ocean's daughter Walking on a wave's chicane Staring as she called my name And I can't get it out of my head No, I can't get it out of my head Now my old world is gone for dead 'Cos I can't get it out of my head"

"It's a livin' thing. It's a terrible thing to lose. It's a given thing. What a terrible thing to lose."

"My Shangri-la has gone away, Faded like the Beatles on Hey Jude She seemed to drift out on the rain That came in somewhere softly from the blue."

"It was one of those nights One of those nights When you feel the world stop turning You were standing there There was music in the air I should have been away But I knew I had to stay"

"Underneath a starry sky Time was still but hours must really have rushed by I didn't realize But love was in your eyes I really should have gone But love went on and on"

"A place where nobody dared to go the love that we came to know They call it Xanadu And now, open your eyes and see what we have made is real We are in Xanadu A million lights are dancing and there you are, a shooting star An everlasting world and you're here with me, eternally Xanadu"

"The love, the echoes of long ago you needed the world to know They are in Xanadu The dream that came through a million years That lived on through all the tears, it came to Xanadu"

"As I gaze around at these strangers in town, I guess the only stranger is me. As I see what they've done to this place that was home, shame is all that I feel."

"I've got a ticket to the moon. I'll be leaving here any day soon"

"When you get so down that you can't get up, and you want so much but you're all out of luck When you're so downhearted and misunderstood, just over and over and over, you could..."

"Maybe I should try singing like a man."

"JB: We had 200 Russians lined up pointing their weapons at us aggressively, which was... and you know we'd been told to reach the airfield and take a hold of it. And if we had a foothold there then it would make life much easier for the NATO forces in Pristina. So there was a political reason to take hold of this. And the practical consequences of that political reason would be then aggression against the Russians. Interviewer: Might have been World War III. JB: Absolutely. And that's why we were querying our instruction from an American general. Fortunately, up on the radio came Gen Mike Jackson, whose exact words at the time were, 'I'm not going to have my soldiers be responsible for starting World War III, and told us why don't we sugar off down the road, you know, encircle the airfield instead."

"Beautiful dawn (beautiful dawn) You're just blowing my mind again Thought I was born to endless night, until you shine.High. Running wild among all the stars above Sometimes it's hard to believe you remember me."

"My life is brilliant, My love is pure. I saw an angel, Of that I'm sure. She smiled at me on the subway; She was with another man. But I won't lose no sleep on that 'Cause I've got a plan."

"You're beautiful. You're beautiful. You're beautiful, it's true. I saw your face in a crowded place, And I don't know what to do. 'Cause I'll never be with you."

"Look who's alone now, It's not me, it's not me. Those three wise men, They've got a semi by the sea. Got to ask yourself the question, Where are you now? Got to ask yourself the question, Where are you now?"

"I am a dreamer and when I wake, You can't break my spirit - it's my dreams you take. And as you move on, remember me. Remember us and all we used to be. I've seen you cry, I've seen you smile. I've watched you sleeping for a while. I'd be the father of your child; I'd spend a lifetime with you. I know your fears and you know mine, We've had our doubts but now we're fine. And I love you, I swear that's true. I cannot live without you."

"There are children standing here, Arms outstretched into the sky, Tears drying on their face. He has been here. Brothers lie in shallow graves, Fathers lost without a trace. A nation blind to their disgrace, Since he's been here.And I see no bravery, No bravery in your eyes anymore. Only sadness."

"I would call you up every Saturday night And we'd both stay out 'til the morning light. And we sang "Here we go again." And though time goes by, I will always be in a club with you in 1973, Singing "Here we go again.""

"Saw the world turning in my sheets And once again, I cannot sleep. Walk out the door and up the street, Look at the stars beneath my feet. Remember rights that I did wrong. So here I go."

"Trouble is her only friend and he's back again. Makes her body older than it really is. She says it's high time she went away. No one's got much to say in this town. Trouble is the only way is down, Down, down.As strong as you were, tender you go. I'm watching you breathing for the last time. A song for your heart, but when it is quiet, I know what it means and I'll carry you home. I'll carry you home."

"Many prophets preach on bended knee, Many clerics wasted wine. Do the bloody sheets On those cobbled streets mean I have wasted time?"

"And if this is what we’ve got, then what we’ve got is gold We’re shining bright and I want you, I want you to know The morning’s on its way Our friends all say goodbye There’s nowhere else to go I hope that you’ll stay the night You'll stay the night."

"Tell me the wars you're fighting Behind the smile you're hiding All of the things I know you want to say We tried our best to find us But there are no lights to guide us I can't sleep beside a stranger now And piece by piece we fall apart With every beat slows down my heart."

"So many voices, Too many noises. Invisible lies keeping us apart. So many choices, but they're all disappointment And they only steal me away from you. Climb into our own private bubble, Let's get into all kinds of trouble."

"If time is all I have, I'll waste it all on you. Each day I'll turn it back. It's what the broken-hearted do. I'm tired of talking to an empty space Of silences keeping me awake."

"Your mouth is a revolver, firing bullets in the sky (Mh-mh-mh-mh) Your love is like a soldier, loyal 'till you die (Mh-mh-mh-mh) And I’ve been looking at the stars for a long, long time I’ve been putting out fires all my life Everybody wants a flame, they don’t want to get burnt And today is our turnDays like these lead to Nights like this lead to Love like ours You light the spark in my bonfire heart People like us, we don’t Need that much, just some One that starts, starts the spark in our bonfire hearts."

"It's ok, cause I know You shine even on a rainy day And I can find your halo Guides me to wherever you fall If you need a hand to hold I'll come running, because You and I won't part till we die You should know We see eye to eye, heart to heart."

"I'm sending postcards from my heart Your love for a postmark and then You know that you make me feel like We've been caught like kids in the schoolyard again And I can't keep it to myself."

"When I met you I was treading water And baby I know you know I got an eye that wanders But right now in this car that we're driving to your sister's All I'm lookin' for is something that's forever."

"It's a little after midnight There's a couple in the corner And I wonder what he said because she's crying And I guess they won't remember When they wake up in the morning With the headache from the whiskey and the wine I know that I have said things I regret when I am sober 'Cause we always hurt the ones we love the most."

"Don't give me those eyes 'cause you know me and I can't say no to you We can't have each other even if we wanted to In another life, darling, I'll do anything to be with you We can't have each other even if we wanted to Don't give me those eyes, don't give me those eyes."

"Without your arms around me, without you on my skin Without you on my body, I’m sorry, I’m sorry I don’t mean to be desperate or pretend that I’m not torn But I don’t want to let go of the things that keep me warm Without you, I’m just cold."

"I'm not your son, you're not my father We're just two grown men saying goodbye No need to forgive, no need to forget I know your mistakes and you know mine And while you're sleeping, I'll try to make you proud So, daddy, won't you just close your eyes? Don't be afraid, it's my turn To chase the monsters away."

"A couple of years ago, we went to Eurodisney. That too was bearable, although it was a bit weird when Mickey Mouse came to ask for an autograph. (Humo Magazine, 2000)"

"But everyone I know reaches a point where they throw out their arms and go beserk for a while; otherwise you never know what your limits are. I was just trying to find mine. (Guitar Player magazine 1992)"

"I could write songs as bad as Wham's if I really felt the urge to, but what's the point? (The Hit magazine 1985)"

"I don't think of death in a romantic way anymore. (L'Express newspaper 2000)"

"I don't understand this obsession with banging out records. What a stupid attitude! Like the world is holding its breath waiting for the next Cure album. It isn't. (Papermag Paper Daily 1996)"

"I have a bag full of words, and when one of us comes up with a good piece of music, I look in the bag to see if anything there will fit. If nothing does, I sit down and try to put down on paper what the music makes me feel; very rarely will a piece of writing inspire a piece of music. (CANOE 1996)"

"I honestly don't class myself as a songwriter. I've got 'musician' written on my passport. That's even funnier. (The Hit magazine 1985)"

"I think the rock'n'roll myth of living on the edge is a pile of crap. (Spin magazine 1987)"

"I think we're in the Top 10 most bootlegged bands in history according to a web-poll. Pretty much every show we ever do is bootlegged, but it's very rare that one is of good enough quality to be listened to by anything other than the most fanatical people though I suppose only fanatical people buy bootlegs. (X-Press magazine 2000)"

"I wake up and look at myself and think, 'yuck!'. (MTV)"

"I wouldn't want to think people doted on us, hung on every word, or wanted to look like us. (Trouser Press 1980)"

"I'm not going to worry about the Cure slipping down into the second division; it doesn't bother me because I never expected to be in the first division anyway. [A soccer reference] (Alternative Press)"

"I've always spent more time with a smile on my face than not, but the thing is, I don't write about it. (Rolling Stone magazine 1997)"

"I've experienced such extremes both in the band and in my personal life, feelings that last for just a few seconds at a time, that it's like a drug. After a while, when they're not there you notice the absence of it and nothing seems real anymore and nothings quite sharp enough or focused enough. (Spin magazine 1989)"

"Jimi Hendrix changed my life. Each generation influences the following one and as a consequence brings it back to the past. (L'Express newspaper 2000)"

"Most of the time I'm a professional idiot. I really don't care about what other people think, which can be a bad thing. (The Hit magazine 1985)"

"No, come to think of it, I don't think the Cure will end, but I can make up an ending if you want me to. (Spin magazine 1989)"

"Originally I was going to take perverse satisfaction in making a depressing album. (Spin magazine 1989)"

"Refusing to grow up is like refusing to accept your limitations. That's why I don't think we'll ever grow up. (Melody Maker magazine 1992)"

"The Cure, is the kind of band that wanders in and out of the mainstream's gaze. (The Boston Globe newspaper 1997)"

"There have been very few virtuosos in the history of the group, but there have been a lot of really nice people. The Cure backstage is a notoriously fun-filled zone. (JAM TV)"

"There is a reason for me always shoe-gazing. I simply can't look into the eyes of several thousand people. (Toronto Sun newspaper)"

"They may not like us, but they can't get away from knowing who we are. (Spin magazine 1988)"

"If Morrissey says not to eat meat, then I’m going to eat meat; that’s how much I hate Morrissey. (Q, May 1989)"

"We wouldn't have been able to handle the fame if it would've hit us all of the sudden. When I was young I always dreamed of having a group that was adored by few and ignored by the rest of the world, like Nick Drake. Fortunately, when we became famous, I had no time to reflect upon anything anymore. (De Standaard newspaper 2001)"

"What we do attracts to a certain type of people. I don't think age has anything to do with it: either you get into it or you don't. You can be 16 or 60 and you will like us or not depending on your sensibilities. (X-Press Magazine, Australia, September 2000)"

"You know, the Internets made us more aware of what people think about us. (3RRR radio 2000)"

"It's really weird but my parents used to tell me I could do anything I wanted to. I used to say, 'Well, what if I want to be an astronaut and go to the moon?" and my dad used to say, 'If you really want to you can'. I used to think he was talking absolute rubbish, particularly when I was 21 and he was still saying that. But in a way it really stuck with me cos my dad ended up doing exactly what he wanted to do. To an outside point of view he's totally conformed, he's had a family and four kids but he's only ever done things that made him genuinely happy. "He jacked in his job cos it made him unhappy and he didn't want to compromise his entire life just for the sake of carrying it through. It's very admirable, that quality, and I think it's very rare in people. Most people feel so conditioned, so oppressed by everything that goes on around them that they just give in. You have to refuse to give in. (Melody Maker, March 7th 1992)"

"I got very frustrated when I was reading so-called classic books or films, or listening to underground music which is trying to tell you something. it´s all nonsense, and it´s disillusioning. So it would be a paradox for me to then decide I´m going to communicate something. (Sounds, August 24, 1985)"

"I used to go out with Severin a lot to dance clubs but we wouldn't dance. It'd be more like take drugs and try to get to the toilet which would usually take about two hours...we became good friends but we were never really good for each other. Our friendship was based entirely on altered states. Whenever we went out together I would never come home until the next day. Mary hated it. (Faith, 1983)"

"If I were offered the title [a knighthood] I would tell them to stick it up in their arses" (The FIB 2002)"

"The fun thing is something people always miss out on with us. It's been brilliant making this album, but even as far back as Faith or Pornography we were still having a good crack. People would see me and Simon laughing and drinking ourselves unconscious together and they couldn't understand how we could be like that and still be in this angst-ridden band. But it's easy to be like that -- it's what being little, being a child, is all about. When you're grown up, you can't do it cos' you think about it too much. (Melody Maker, March 7, 1992)"

"We never became a mainstream band. It's kind of like we've bridged two worlds, or fallen between two stools, between alternative and mainstream. To a lot of mainstream programmers, The Cure is still a bit too weird. To an alternative programmer, sometimes we're a bit too mainstream. Sometimes we've benefited from that and sometimes we've kind of suffered. I actually enjoy that kind of position because I think it reflects what the band does (CMJ, December 1999)"

"I love the anonymity of being Mr Smith. If I book a hotel it's actually very funny. It's very nice to be a genuine Mr Smith (Q 2000)"

"If the world could outlaw religion for one year you'd be surprised how much better the world would be. (Music Planet 2Nite, 2001)"

"A lot of journalists give me a hard time about how I look, but I've never met a journalist I'd rather look like. And it's not just a performance thing. I don't drive around the countryside in full makeup because it would scare the animals, but I've been wearing makeup since I was a teenager, after I saw Bowie wearing it on Top of the Pops. I immediately borrowed someone's older sister's makeup and put it on. I loved how odd it made me look, and the fact that it upset people. You put on eyeliner and people start screaming at you. How strange, and how marvellous."

"The Cure frontman, who had his first classical guitar lesson aged nine, is one of the most influential and underrated guitarists, creating his own sound by detuning his E string. [...] Many a novice has tried to emulate his extended outro solo on A Forest."

"The softer you sing, the louder you're heard."

"The magic that you hear in tales and things was all based around the Celtic mythology of England, which is Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings. I just drain from that source. I just drain everything. So the magic is there."

"We are magic. It is magic that we're walking around. It's fantastic magic. Some people would call it miracles; I like to call it magic. … Yes, I'm very aware of this. Yes, the more aware I get, the more I can understand how big it is, how big it will get. It'll be harder to comprehend; that's why I have to go along with it, 'cause its so vast. To say to somebody that God is everything that lives and ever has lived and ever will live, and you're never going to touch and see, smell and be everything that is God. Magic is very hard to comprehend."

"It seemed — in 1968 — the possibilities of peace and brotherhood could be realised that very year. We're still working on it."

"In the chilly hours and minutes Of uncertainty I want to be In the warm hold of your lovin' mind. To feel you all around me And to take your hand Along the sand, Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind."

"For me to love you now Would be the sweetest thing, 'Twould make me sing, Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind."

"When rain has hung the leaves with tears I want you near to kill my fears, To help me to leave all my blues behind. For standin' in your heart Is where I want to be And long to be, Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind."

"Sunshine came softly through my a-window today Could've tripped out easy a-but I've a-changed my ways It'll take time, I know it but in a while You're gonna be mine, I know it, we'll do it in style 'Cause I made my mind up you're going to be mine."

"I'll tell you right now Any trick in the book now, baby, all that I can find..."

"I'll pick up your hand and slowly blow your little mind 'Cause I made my mind up you're going to be mine."

"When I look out my window, Many sights to see. And when I look in my window, So many different people to be..."

"You've got to pick up every stitch. Mmm... must be the season of the witch, Must be the season of the witch."

"I'm just mad about Saffron Saffron's mad about me I'm just mad about Saffron She's just mad about me."

"They call me mellow yellow (Quite rightly) They call me mellow yellow..."

"I'm just mad about Fourteen Fourteen's mad about me"

"Electrical banana Is gonna be a sudden craze Electrical banana Is bound to be the very next phase..."

"Wear your love like heaven."

"Lord, kiss me once more, fill me with song Allah, kiss me once more that I may, that I may Wear my love like heaven Wear my love like Wear my love like heaven."

"Thrown like a star in my vast sleep I open my eyes to take a peep To find that I was by the sea Gazing with tranquillity. 'Twas then when the Hurdy Gurdy Man Came singing songs of love..."

"Histories of ages past Unenlightened shadows cast. Down through all eternity The crying of humanity. 'Tis then when the Hurdy Gurdy Man Comes singing songs of love..."

"The great Egyptian age is but a remnant of The Atlantian culture. The antediluvian kings colonised the world All the gods who play in the mythological dramas In all legends from all lands were from fair Atlantis. Knowing her fate, Atlantis sent out ships to all corners of the Earth. On board were the Twelve: The Poet, the Physician, the Farmer, the Scientist, The Magician and the other so-called Gods of our legends. Though gods they were —"

"Let us rejoice and let us sing and dance and ring in the new: Hail Atlantis!"

"Way down below the ocean where I wanna be she may be."

"The most important of my achievements, if you want to call them that, was that I successfully introduced mystical ideas into pop culture, which was my obsession and my compulsion when I was 16 years old. So, behind all of this fame and fortune, there was a seeker, on a spiritual path — a young man who wanted to discover and share with others an alternative way of looking at the world. I wanted to save our culture from the stupidity and the bigotry and the ignorance that threatened it. And there was the Buddhist way, and the Celtic way."

"I found myself at the top of the the ladder, with everything, but with one thing missing: that one thing was a companion. Because, it's cliché to say, but nothing really means anything in the end unless you're really doing what you want to do, and... I walked off a huge world tour, with a yacht and television specials, and record deals, and film deals. I walked away and my whole thing collapsed. I shocked my business world and walked back to my cottage, which I had been renting to two American girls. One of them was Cynthia, and I stayed with her for two days, then her friend Lori came back from Clapton's house, where there had been a party going on for almost a week. Lori came in with another friend, and it was Linda, my Sunshine Supergirl from 1965 whom I'd written all my songs for. We hadn't married then, because she had a child with Brian Jones and wasn't ready for another relationship. And it was good that we didn't marry back then, because my four years of '60's fame would have wrecked the marriage. But we met again, and I went away from fame and into the arms of my muse, my lover, and then my wife, and then the mother of my children."

"I still carry with me the same themes as always — I'm still compelled to present mystic ideas..."

"Up to '67, the drugs were, uh, soft. Marijuana, and even LSD, I considered soft drugs then. But, then, after '67, needle drugs and the strong amphetamines came in, and that's when the Beatles and Donovan stood up and said, 'Try meditation instead.' And I still stick by that, of course. You've got to be very, very careful. I'm talking about naive days, before the drug barons and the dealers took over. It was once a small, bohemian event. But it was when millions started wanting to get high that it got bad. And when Haight-Asbury turned into Skid Row, the Beatles and me stood up and said, 'Give it a rest.' The answer is that each individual must face the problem by himself. And meditation is an alternative. Meditation is a lot better for you, and it's great to be straight."

"When I was 14 or 15 I wanted to be a protest singer like Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. My father was a socialist and worked with the unions. I thought change was to change the government and to change from one system, capitalism, to socialism and to make the poor of the world happy. But when I opened the book The Way of Zen by Alan Watts and I opened up the Diamond Sutra, and Lao Tsu’s Tao Te Ching, I realized that the problem of suffering was much deeper than governments and social problems. The problems were very deep. They were nothing short of changing the way we look at reality. Therefore I became a teacher, or a reflection of the teachings. Phil Ochs, the great protest singer, said I had given up protest, and Joan Baez said to Bob Dylan, “He’s given up protest.” But what I had given up was looking for the answer in social change. The change was to be a spiritual change. The suffering was coming from an erroneous view of reality..."

"We are one, we are all brothers and sisters, but the people of the world do not know this. So this was the teaching, but how do you teach it? As young people, John Lennon, George Harrison, myself, Carlos Santana and other spiritual seekers in pop music, we wanted to know the answer but we found a question: How do you convince the rest of the western world that they are ill, they are mentally ill, that they have a sickness and that they have lost the way? How do you teach that? You cannot teach that in the normal sense. You have to encourage a spiritual call, so we devoted ourselves to making songs which would have a spiritual call inside of them, hoping to awaken an awareness with this music. And other people in the arts felt the same..."

"Today I can’t comment on what the problem is in China, Russia, or Africa without realizing again and again the Diamond Sutra, which says that we look at the world and see it as separate but in fact, this is an illusion, but the reality is that we are one shining being. Until this can be understood, I can’t see any change. But I see some change now. There is a world consciousness. In the "old" New Age, they talked about the Age of Aquarius being an age of enlightenment. And now when a man goes to the moon he sees the earth. Before when someone did meditation he or she could meditate on the earth and the moon but now a man and a woman can see that we are on one planet and that the water is polluted and that the air is dirty. So these are changes that are important. But when we spoke about these things in the 60s people said we were dreamers."

"I sometimes wonder whether we're the last dying breath of that '60's grim working class thing! I often feel like we're that one solitary clog left in the middle of the Arndale Centre! The idea of taking that spirit of optimism and of possible change and trying to use it in '84 I don't see anything wrong with at all. But more important than that are the images we grew up with: smokey chimneys, backstreets, the impressions I get from Morrissey's lyrics. It isn't just nostalgia, it's a Northern spirit, a working man's spirit - and here I'm trying to not sound like Gary Kemp doing the working class bit. But we're more about the working class values in the '60's than Rickenbackers and Brian Jones haircuts... Certainly we don't feel restrained musically in any way by the period. What I'm saying is we do not confuse roots with formula. The formula we're prepared to slash away at, musically try things we've never done before. But the roots are the reason why we're here. That's something I'll never get away from. I'm always aware of why we started and I think that's a good thing. Those reasons are still valid."

"And now I know how Joan of Arc felt Now I know how Joan of Arc felt As the flames rose to her And her started to melt"

"I've always believed that any instrumentalist is basically just an accompanist to the singer and the words. That's born out of being a fan of records before I was a fan of guitar players -- I'm interested in melody, lyrics, and the overall song. I don't like to waste notes, not even one. Who was it that said, "The reason why all those guitar players play so many notes is because they can't find the right one"? I like to put the right note in the right place, and my influences have always been those kinds of players. Keith Richards comes to mind, and I really like Nils Lofgren's soloing, because he's so melodic. I love John Lennon's rhythm playing, and George Harrison was an incredible guitarist. There's a lot of guitar culture that I don't like at all. I find the traditional idea of the guitar hero to be really irrelevant to the 1990s. I don't think that young people are that impressed with some guy brandishing Spandex trousers and a hideously shaped guitar, playing that kind of masturbatory, egotistical noise. Being a soloist who wants to just display virtuosity is a dated philosophy, and I don't think there's any room for it in pop music. It's the last stand of late-'60s/early-'70s rockism, and it should have gone a long time ago."

"I think when something's over, events have a way of conspiring to make you realise that it's over. As cryptic as that sounds, it's true. Things would happen and I'd be like, Am I going to have to deal with this for the rest of my life? And it was a very, very emotional band. It's in the music. The relationship between me and Morrissey was very emotional. It wasn't volatile in that we would row or anything like that, but it was so intense that if rocked slightly it would be a big deal. Was the lack of a manager important? Massively, I think. I was nursemaiding people when I needed nursemaiding myself. And I couldn't see where we were going to go in the near future musically without repeating ourselves and not being as good."

"About the cover of "The world wont’ listen" It represents the band to me. On the front you've got four guys who look like, if not the band, then Smiths fans. On the back you've got the female side of it - individually they really look like the Smiths: Morrissey on the far right, me on the second right, Andy [Rourke, bass] on the second left and Mike [Joyce, drums] on the far left. To find a picture like that is really clever. We didn't discuss it, but I understood."

"Q: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received? JM: Never get into a situation you can’t get out of. I really have stuck to it, because it’s good advice for all walks of live."

"When I crashed my BMW and managed to walk away pretty much unscathed, it was a turning point. I'd been living the life, and when people see photos of the car wreck, they can't believe I got away with it. It was like a fog had lifted. I stopped drinking a bottle of Tequila before grabbing my car keys. It was time to wise-up and get a haircut."

"Birkenstock desert boots have been a part of pop culture since the beatniks. I made such a fuzz about them being discontinued that the company send me an "lifetime supply", which initially turned out to be seven pairs at two years apiece. They weren’t giving me very long. I think that’s why I gave up smoking."

"There have been plenty of times when I've been a total dick like everybody else, you know, I mean I wanted to be a little rock'n'roller, and I was, and it was great. I had a to-do list of like "Thou shalt wear sunglasses indoors at all times." Done. "Thou shalt take drugs and have a great time." Done. "Thou shalt crash a big car into a wall." Done."

"Noel Gallagher: "There's nothing he can't do on a guitar. I've been in the studio with him. He's played on Oasis tracks and stuff. The man's a fucking wizard. I've seen Johnny Marr on the telly and he had thick black shades on, a white polo neck, a Brian Jones bowl head, a red semi-acoustic, a pair of jeans and I don't know what he had on his feet, but I thought "That's it. That's what I want to look like.""

"Marr has been described as "arguably Britain's last great guitar stylist", a "God-like genius", and most affectionately, "the man who would not solo". No matter the title, Johnny Marr effortlessly shrugged off once-ironclad notions. Unafraid to lay back, Marr's jangly sound, open tunings, melody-ridden arpeggios and chordal chiming are all notable components of his playing style."

"A church full of singing, out of tune Everyone's gone to the moon"

"You see a long time ago life had begun Everyone went to the sun"

"As I walk through This wicked world Searchin' for light in the darkness of insanity, I ask myself Is all hope lost? Is there only pain and hatred, and misery? And each time I feel like this inside, Theres one thing I wanna know: What's so funny 'bout Peace, Love, and Understanding?"

"So where are the strong And who are the trusted? And where is the harmony? Sweet harmony — 'cause each time I feel it slippin away, it just makes me wanna cry: What's so funny 'bout Peace, Love, and Understanding?"

"I knew the bride when she used to rock and roll."

"And so it goes and so it goes But where it's goin' no one knows."

"I pick myself up off the ground to have you knock me back down Again and again and when I ask you to explain You say, you've got to be... Cruel to be kind in the right measure Cruel to be kind it's a very good sign Cruel to be kind means that I love you Baby, you got to be cruel, you got to be cruel to be kind."

"Even if I was really prolific — which I'm not — I think I'd always put at least a couple of covers on my record. I think it's a sort of healthy thing to do. It shows that you're not totally self-obsessed."

"I've always felt quite like an outsider. I don't really belong in the mainstream, and I quite like that."

"You know, the actual punk music, I didn't care for at all. I thought it was all rubbish, really. It was the attitude, the way that things were being shaken up, that excited me more. I still liked people who were good, you know? Who could actually play. Even though The Damned were a punk group, they played great. As did Elvis, and as did Ian. They were the ones who interested me. Not some of those daft punkers, especially the ones who had people who were actually pretty good musicians sort of pretending to play badly. That was just so stupid, and missed the point completely, I thought. So it was the people who were true to themselves, I think, that were the exciting ones."

"Time, flowing like a river Time, beckoning me Who knows when we shall meet again If ever But time Keeps flowing like a river To the sea"

"While the children laughed I was always afraid Of the smile of the clown So I close my eyes Till I can't see the light And I hide from the sound We're two of a kind Silence and I We need a chance to talk things over Two of a kind Silence and I"

"It filled me with dread – she had a reputation for being difficult. She had been headlining on the Royal Command performance the night before we were due to start. She arrived and swept through reception looking like thunder and disappeared into the studio. I thought, ‘I’m the first here, I’d better go in and introduce myself’. I walked in and I said: ‘Morning Miss Bassey, my name is Martin Rushent and I’m going to be your new engineer and co-producer’. She threw a mic stand at me. She told me to get out. She apologised afterwards, I hasten to add."

"He was an extraordinary bloke. First of all he was very funny. He was straight but very camp. [He] came in and Visconte said, ‘Right, what are we doing?’. He said: ‘Well I haven’t got any material, I’ve just got one guitar riff’. So he played us this guitar riff. It sounded a bit like Chuck Berry to me but I didn’t say anything. He went out with the band and after two hours he said, ‘Right, got a song’. So we recorded it and took a few takes. He then said, ‘Right I’ve got a bit of a tune, just give me half an hour’. In 10 minutes he came back and said, ‘Right I’ve got the lyrics and got the tune’. So he’d written Get It On in 10 minutes basically. He went out there, sang it and in four or five takes we’d got it. There it was. The guy was absolutely astonishing.""

"They came up and we did Sound Of The Crowd. They were under the impression that I was going to work on what they’d done so far and improve that and carry on. I said, ‘No, I’m not doing that, we’re starting again’, which was a bit of a shock for Phil. He argued about that but I said, ‘No, if I’m going to produce you, you’re going to do what I tell you to do. I will listen to your arguments and consider them, and if I still think I’m right we do it my way or it’s the highway. This is my attitude to everybody I produce, it’s a sort of democratic dictatorship!""

""We were just making a record and suddenly it just exploded all over the world and has since become a legendary record. It’s just mad! If somebody had told me then ‘Do you realise that you are making history with this record?’ I’d have said, ‘Yeah alright, calm down and have a cup of tea’."

"He chased us all round the studio and we had to lock ourselves into another studio to prevent him getting us. He was a big guy. He came in the following morning and he was alright. I think his management had had a word and said, ‘Look this album is going really well, it’s not a good idea to frighten the life out of people who are helping you make it’. He was quite pleasant, but he never apologised."

"I programmed all the drums and synths, while he played all the guitars. The initial plan was just to demo his songs because he was out of his UA deal, so we pumped it to people like Island and Virgin and they loved it. It was signed to Island, but Simon Draper of Virgin heard it and called me to talk about their band, the Human League. They'd done demos of The Sound of the Crowd and Love Action in a Sheffield studio, but Simon didn't think they were getting the punch they needed. He loved the drums on Homosapien and asked me to do a track. So the band turned up at Genetic with their multi-track for The Sound of the Crowd. Simon had conned them and told them that I'd mix it! I said, 'We're going to start again and do it better'. There were a few grumbles, but by the time we'd finished, they were really pleased."

"I’d got all this new technology and we spent a year making the album, programming all these primitive computers. [The LinnDrum] sounded so much like real drums it was difficult to tell it apart. The tempo was absolutely precise because it all ran to a digital clock and the record just was precision itself. It was also very simple. If you actually analyse what was going on at any given moment in time there may be only four or five things going on, but it does the job.""

"In [the early 1980s], making electronic music was a big job, particularly the way that I was doing it. To get the sounds I wanted, I might have 24 synthesizers playing one synth line, all programmed, all analogue and all drifting out of tune. It used to take hours and hours and hours. I don't know how we ever got through it."

"I, I wish you could swim Like the dolphins Like dolphins can swim Though nothing, nothing will keep us together We can beat them, forever and ever Oh, we can be heroes just for one day."

"When you see people like Ken Loach, David Miller, Jackie Walker, when you see those people being accused of antisemitism, you cannot help but say this is all made up."

"A way to make new music is to imagine looking back at the past from a future and imagine music that could have existed but didn't. Like East African free jazz, which as far as I know does not exist. To some extent, this was how ambient music emerged. My interest in making music has been to create something that does not exist that I would like to listen to, not because I wanted a job as a musician. I wanted to hear music that had not yet happened, by putting together things that suggested a new thing which did not yet exist. It's like having a ready-made formula if you are able to read it. One of the innovations of ambient music was leaving out the idea that there should be melody or words or a beat… so in a way that was music designed by leaving things out – that can be a form of innovation, knowing what to leave out. All the signs were in the air all around with ambient music in the mid 1970s, and other people were doing a similar thing. I just gave it a name. Which is exactly what it needed. A name. A name. Giving something a name can be just the same as inventing it. By naming something you create a difference. You say that this is now real."

"Saying that cultural objects have value is like saying that telephones have conversations."

"If you don’t call it art, you’re likely to get a better result."

"The only value of ideology is to stop things becoming showbiz."

"Ideas worth questioning: "Being an artist is a job for life.""

"The reason conservatives cohere and radicals fight: everyone agrees about fears, no one about visions."

"Try to make things that can become better in other people’s minds than they were in yours."

"My friend Peter Schmidt used to talk about ‘not doing the things that nobody had ever thought of not doing’, which is an inverse process – where you leave out an assumption that everybody has always made and see what happens (e.g. music has to be made of intentionally produced sounds was the assumption that Cage left out). In that version of this process, you discover a value in the absence of something ­– in fact you discover that the absence of something is the revelation of something else (Buñuel, the film-maker, said, "Every object conceals another" – a message that I often relay in the studio when overdubbing starts)."

"Rationality is what we do to organize the world, to make it possible to predict. Art is the rehearsal for the inapplicability and failure of that process."

"As struggles go, being an artist isn't that much of one."

"Ambient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular; it must be as ignorable [sic] as it is interesting."

"At the party, Rob Partridge said to me, "You gave hope to other balding men." My new epitaph: "Co-wrote a couple of decent songs and went bald shamelessly.""

"Creative work is serious play."

"The musician is as rich as the music they give away."

"Act with courtesy - Otherwise, be polite, but always be kind."

"If we don’t know where we’re going, we’ll probably get there; if where we are going is how we get there, we are already where we are going."

"It is difficult to exaggerate the power of habit."

"A mistake is always forgivable, rarely excusable, and never acceptable."

"Me and a book is a party. Me and a book and a cup of coffee is an orgy."

"You see, the thing is, I’ve been in jams like this. The feeling is totally there among the musicians (and whoever else happens to be sitting around, whether they’ve paid for it or not, probably, and preferably, not). You are close to silence, Silence with a capital S. You are in tune with silence, the deepest sound of them all. Every sound, therefore, that you make, make with intention, sensitivity, and awareness, has a meaning, an ineffability, a significance. You are listening, Listening with a capital L. You hear what everyone else is doing; you do whatever is necessary, which is usually as little as possible. It has nothing to do with self-expression: it has to do with a group mind."

"There is no such thing as making a mistake. Only one thing is compulsory, only one mistake: and that is not realizing your mistakes."

"A principle is universal, a rule is inflexible, a law is invariable."

"Music so wishes to be heard that sometimes it calls on unlikely characters to give it voice, and ears. This wishing-to-be heard calls into existence the Performance Event; where music, musician and audience may come together as one, in communion. This communion has six different forms of being and experiencing itself (plus an invisible seventh); and these forms, or principles, are simultaneously present within the Performance."

"We are able to be with others only to the degree that we are able to be ourselves. This being so, we can only be in the performance to the degree that we can be ourselves: to be who we are."

"We begin with the possible, and move gradually towards the impossible."

"Normality is what we might achieve, given who we are, what we are, the conditions and limitations of the world we work within."

"Music is the cup which holds the wine of silence. Sound is that cup, but empty. Noise is that cup, but broken."

"I woke at 9:57 having got to bed at 6:30 subsequent to spraying burning guitar over David Bowie's new album and not leaving the studio until 5:00."

"With a note of music, one strikes the fundamental, and, in addition to the root note, other notes are generated: these are called the harmonic series...As one fundamental note contains within it other notes in the octave, two fundamentals produce a remarkable array of harmonics, and the number of possible combinations between all the notes increases phenomenally. With a triad, affairs stand a good chance of getting severely out of hand..."

"On media consideration to be a reluctant rock star: I'm not a reluctant rock star, I am not one at all. I haven't an ounce of rock star in me. [...] What I despise about the rock star lifestyle is the lack of music in it. The average day is spent travelling to hotels, giving interviews, being nice to people you're told to be nice to, and maybe if you're lucky you might squeeze a bit of music in. The musician's day is music. [...] I am in that unique little club, where I went into music because I love music, not because I wanted to be rich and famous. I've always knocked on the door of the musicians' room, not the rock stars' room. The British press refuses to see the difference between them, mainly because of the capers of people like Phil Collins, a musician who behaves like a rock star. But there are people who love music and have no interest in being a rock star at all."

"On working at La Passione (1996): Day one, the damage was done. All it was meant to be was one hour of a little boy’s dreams. And I had things I wanted to do with the guitar that hadn’t been done before. Like, there’s one number called "Olive Oil", where I was actually playing slide guitar in the same scale as a saxophone. [...] But then in came millions of executives from America. So in the end, it fell flat on its arse. And it came out the same week that Britpop took off. Blair had just won the election. Oasis. Spice Girls. So something a bit Fellini-ish – about a little boy who loved red cars – went straight over the top. It was like, ‘Well, don’t you have a 335 guitar with a Union Jack on it?’"

"On Charley Patton's voice and music style: I heard this fella, and his voice sounded like my voice. I’d always thought, ‘Well, I could never be a singer with this horrible voice’. I hated it. Absolutely hated it. Still do. But he sounded like the same kind of thing. I didn’t know black American terms: a boll weevil or turnpike blues. But there was an emotion that clicked with me. I became fascinated with gospel blues. I still play more gospel than Chicago. I very rarely go anywhere near that speed, aggression, Clapton thing. Someone once reviewed me, saying the testosterone was missing from my blues solos, because I don’t do Chicago. It’s just alien to me."

"On blues in the music industry: You say that word ‘blues’ to anybody in the business – and they fucking run a mile. It’s unbelievable. I had a lot of trouble with Road To Hell. We’d actually recorded the next album – Auberge – before, as an agreement with Warner Brothers. So if Road To Hell didn’t work – and they said it won’t – we would jump straight away to Auberge and forget about it. Of course, the beginning to Road To Hell is a gospel-blues thing. Warner Brothers went, ‘This is going to be over in five minutes’. But I did stand me ground, and it went No.1."

"On modern blues: Me and the modern blues scene, we have difficulty getting on. I sometimes get the feeling that it’s all sixth-form college: ‘Oh, you shouldn’t do that.’ A lot of modern blues is academic. It’s what someone else did. But the blues is one of the biggest examples of evolution. It’s in constant change. You can’t document it and say ‘stop’. It should be free. [...] And has become some kind of technical thing. I’m fed up now of seeing, ‘Oh, this guitarist is faster than that guitarist’ – that’s got nothing to do with the fucking blues. Then you get guys who come along like Allman’s nephew (Derek Trucks): now that’s good. Fuck me. That’s what blues should be: something you haven’t heard before. The other stuff can get a bit like... you know when you fart in the bath? These scales get so fucking fast. Musically, emotionally, it ceases to do anything."

"On his refusal of a set for MTV Unplugged: It’s one of the biggest career mistakes I’ve ever made. I’d be so much more wealthy, because of America. I was offered one of the first ones. But I saw Eric Clapton on it, and it reminded me of Pebble Mill At One. I thought, ‘Oh my God, I don’t want anything to do with this’. Because he’s like God to me. [...] So I turned it down. I should have had an older brother who said, ‘Fucking do it’."

"On his first Ferrari: Yeah. It was instant disappointment. (Pink Floyd drummer) Nick Mason said to me once, ‘Chris, do yourself a favour. Stop trying to make excuses about all this. You’re a sad bastard. It could have been heroin. But it’s red cars.’ And he was right. There was nowhere to drive the fucking thing. Y’know, you put it in your garage. You didn’t want anyone to know you had it. Then you take it out, and you couldn’t find anywhere you could do more than 40 miles an hour. I’m a competent driver. I’ve raced at Monza. But it’s a terrible thing. Blues guitar and motor racing bring out real testosterone in some guys."

"On his neglect of being a rock star: There’s a certain discipline about being a rock star, and I don’t have it. If I was a rock star, I wouldn’t have let a photographer in here, dressed like this. I’d have been down the hairdressers. You try and get Sting to do something without 15 advisors. These boys are like Russian princes..."

"On the disappearance of "rock star" hysteria surrounding him: I took it rather better than some of them I could tell you about, who had nervous breakdowns because they’re not the king any more. I found fame really annoying. Anything to do with ‘celebrity’, I just don’t get."

"On the rock stars: Rock stars don’t talk to each other. They’re too important to talk to another one. They’ve all got their own little palace, their own universe, of which they are the head. So how can they possibly go to somebody else’s universe? They can’t handle it. I will one day write the book that shows just how massive some of these egos are. Because I was a slow success, I was meeting people socially whose records I had at home, who were now talking to me on a what-strings-do-you-use level. And very few of them have not disappointed. [Pink Floyd’s] Dave Gilmour is the only one that [hasn’t disappointed]. That paints everyone else as a cunt. Which they are. But Gilmour is fabulous."

"On the artist, Charley Patton, who changed him: What happened was I was going out on a Saturday night, so I went into my mam’s bedroom, she’s got a double mirror, really kitsch 50s. So I’m in there, doing that, and she’s got an old alarm clock where the radio comes on, but she never learned how to do it properly. And it came on. [...] I remember it was ten past three in the afternoon and it was winter, it was getting dark, and it was when the BBC had just started doing Telstar live things from America. It was some station in Memphis - one of those classic names, ‘RK 51’ or whatever. [...] On it came and there’s this record. The satellite thing was a bit cloudy and it was a 78 record and there was compression on the radio, so it was this strange kind of musical blur with this voice coming through: Charley Patton. [...] On that night I told the bass player of one of the local bands that I’d heard this record and it sounded weird, it sounded like a violin. He said, ‘No, it’s not a violin, it’s a slide guitar.’ I thought, ‘What’s one of them?’"

"On the change of the original version of La Passione (1996) by Warner Vision: ...they thought it was a great idea and we started - and more and more people were turning up and I didn’t know who the fuck they were. ‘Oh, that’s Arty somebody, he’s from Warner Vision, he’s flown over from…’ and they’re all yapping away and none of them could get their heads round the idea that it wasn’t meant to be a story. [...] Anyway, egos went all over the place and I lost complete control of it and what I intended it to be hardly went in to the terrible, boring film. And the other thing that really hurt was I did three tracks - which sadly we lost - where, if something mischievous happened, the original idea was to bring in the slide guitar that would start playing a Count Basie routine. All that never happened, it was a shame. [...] They didn’t understand at all, especially the Americans, I mean… I got permission at Ferrari to have their place for a day and there was no film stock left - and I think that sums up the project."

"On his experience with streaming, illegal downloading: Every Christmas we got a nice little present off God, you know, with sales of The Best Of… and since it’s gone in to YouTube the shortfall is over 90 per cent because people don’t need to buy the record. They would but you’re offering them Driving Home For Christmas for 32p. [...] You see, I’m lucky - we did very well. I feel sorry for the young Chris Reas who aren’t pop stars but love music, but they don’t have anywhere to go with the music, you know? I mean Derek Trucks, it’s just criminal what’s happened to his potential sales because of what’s happened to the business."

"Fool if you think it's over 'Cause you said goodbye Fool if you think it's over I'll tell you why New born eyes always cry with pain At the first look at the mornin' sun Fool if you think it's over It's just begun"

"There's rain on my window But I'm thinking of you Tears on my pillow But I will come through Josephine I'll send you all my love And every single step, I'll take I'll take for you"

"Driving in my car I'm driving home for Christmas With a thousand memories I take look at the driver next to me He's just the same Just the same"

"Look out world take a good look What comes down here You must learn this lesson fast And learn it well This ain't no upwardly mobile freeway Oh no, this is the road to Hell"

"Obviously we're English middle-class chaps - there's not much voodoo chile about us."

"It is actually, in a way, an incredibly mundane experience. Not everyone has a heart attack but everyone has something or other, so I'm not remotely special. Just because I write songs doesn't make it a better or worse near-death experience."

"Re-awakening isn't easy when you're tired. Don't push me: I was taught self-expression when I was a child"

"The streets seemed very crowded, I put on my bravest guise I know you know that I am acting, I can see it in your eyes."

"These words are not enough to save my soul, they just mock me from the mirror."

"She's here now, perfume coiled like a thuggee scarf"

"If we were always here and now, electric shiver in the spine, how could we turn away, see life as grey and drab? How come we don't see what we have?"

"Ha! It's poetry in motion. She turned her tender eyes to me, As deep as any ocean, As sweet as any harmony. Mm, but she blinded me with science (She blinded me with science!) And failed me in biology, yeah."

"The Earth can be any shape you want it any shape at all Dark and cold or bright and warm long or thin or small If love is all you're missing look into your heart: Is anybody home? There are stones buried in your soul In time you'll come to understand this flat old Earth is in your gentle hands"

"I scare myself just thinking about you I scare myself when I'm without you I scare myself, the moment that you're gone I scare myself when I let my thoughts run But it's oh so very different when we're together And I'm so, so, so much calmer, I feel better 'Cause the stars already crossed our paths forever And the sooner that we realize it, the better And then I'll be with you and I won't scare myself And I'll know what to do and I won't scare myself And my thoughts will run and I won't scare myself And I'll think of you and I won't scare myself"

"Some people sing love songs Everybody's got one This isn't my love song It's more like my love-gone-wrong song She came to breakfast And stayed a week But the lie detectors Broke down each time she tried to speak Broke down when she said: "You came close Close but no cigar You didn't miss by far You know you came this close Close but no cigar." I remember, I remember, I remember The promise in your eyes As black as the night I drove you to the airport And I remember, I remember, I remember The wide Brazilian sky that swallowed you Then I hit thirty Guess I can't complain But I must have been lonely The night I bumped into Lorraine She came for coffee And stayed all night But the lie detectors Broke down every time I tried to smile Broke down like the story of my life And each dream I missed by half a mile Broke down when I told her: "You came close Close but no cigar You didn't miss by far You know you came this close Close but no cigar.""

"It’s like when footballers run underwater in water tanks…There’s a high pressure against your body. If you can run fast in a water tank, when they take you out of the water, you can run way faster because there’s less pressure. I used to go on to radio sets and be spraying so fast, people would be like, ‘How are you doing that?’"

"I never felt like I was in the grime scene…I was the outsider. So when I veered away from it, I didn’t feel like I was leaving the circle – I felt like I was never in it…No one paid me any attention…I had to do everything on my own."

"I feel like I was more accepted by the white community than the black [one]. A lot of the time, the black kids would be like, ‘Oh, ’cause you lighter, you’re not as “gang” as us. That’s really the attitude they have. It made me misbehave more because I felt like I had to prove a point."

"If a woman [has] shared her body with me, why can I not speak of my experience?...It’s not me casting a judgment on someone, it’s something that has happened. You can rap about whatever the hell you wanna rap about – that’s why we’re rappers. You can have an opinion against it but you can’t tell me not to do it. At the end of the day, that’s the way it is."

"I only arrived in the world in 1988, by which point you were already seeing many of the great things happen and by the time I started going clubbing it was all about jungle It was great fun, but a hostile environment. It wasn’t a place for a gangly, 6-foot-5-inch, mousy-haired, scarf-wearing twat like myself. More a place go and do shed loads of cocaine and try and start a fight. But I loved the sound system. The culture of taking sound systems around really interested me, and when dubstep broke, that was it."

"I would be spooning my 6'8" boyfriend. I'm the big spoon, obviously. He'll love that I said that."

"One’s life is one’s faith when you commit your life to Christ, if you really want to be a Christian it will cost you your life. I learned that from a man who wrote books."

"I don’t think schools are the best way to teach children. Schools should be for fish, not human beings."

"I scribble on oak trees Pretty please you can sing my syllables credible My cordon bleu sonnets you just wishing they edible"

"You can't rap, my friend You're white and you're from Fulham Please put down the mic there's no way you can fool them Don't be stupid, you won't get that far Turn your back on hip-hop, bruv, and go and play guitar"

"It's worse by the day now, every time I lay down words come alive in my head and they play loud It's like they can't find a way out Wanna pull the plug on their party, it's starting to worry me, can't get to sleep when I wanna do How would you feel if your lyrics just followed you everywhere you went from the street to the bed and repeated through the night everything you said Tried so many things, pen and a pad by the side of my bed but it's sending me mad Every time I recline, I decline to opine but there's always a rhyme at the back of my mind... Sentences now they form in queues... And my mind won't stop cos I always gotta finish it"

"First we made the wheel Then we made the car Then we made the bomb Now it's all gone wrong"

"She's electric, she's the current running through my veins She's a siren, hearing voices that I can't explain Now I should be thinking it over Instead I'm calling her over Now she's here and she won't go quietly I should be thinking it over Instead I'm calling her over Now she's here but she won't go quietly"

"I don't know why it happened so fast When I tried to speak your language I'm happy you laughed 'cause I'm hardly a linguist spoke through kisses cos you didn't speak English and it was hard to distinguish love at first sight or holiday romance? Don't care, I was lost in the moment I really should'a missed that flight"

"Two lives, living two lives I don't know which side of me is where the truth lies I'm living two lives, living two lives I got two sides of me try'n'a do right I got one on each shoulder both saying "I told ya" One is saying "Go" and the other's saying "No, no, no.""

"Start to think it could be fizzling out Kinda shocked because I never really had any doubts Look into your eyes, imagine life without ya And the love kick starts again"

"Time might fly girls may cry lights may die but the skies don't lie It'll all make perfect sense if you follow me Come follow me now"

"If we don't kill ourselves, we'll be the leaders of a messed up generation If we don't kid ourselves, will they believe us if we tell them the reasons why? Did we take it too far (take it too far)? Did we chase the rabbit into Wonderland, lose a hundred grand, Will they understand it was all to stay awake for the longest"

"I've never been afraid of the highest heights or afraid of flying now I've never been afraid of the wildest fights not afraid of dying But now I want off this ride cos you're scaring me and I don't like where we're going I need a new funfair cos you're scaring me and I don't like where we're going And now you're gonna miss me, I know you're gonna miss me I guarantee you'll miss me Cos you changed the way you kiss me"

"Cos we're starving We're hungry for more of the good stuff Thirsty for more of the bad stuff When you gonna show us the way?"

"Need to tell myself I don't care Need to tell myself you're not there Need some air, need some space Need some air The way I'm feeling I just don't care. This is Starship Trooper living on a whole other planet Reboot computer"

"I gotta get out of this habit we're in The weekend comes and we're at it again Sayin' it won't but it's happened again, slackin' I worship the ground you walk on but you're dragging me down We never had a day go by we were sober Sittin' in a cold room wide awake And now I've gotta say goodbye to the sofa See, I gotta go, can't hide away"

"Throw your stones (Wo-oh-oh-ohhh) We can hold our own (Wo-oh-oh-ohhh) I don't need no microphone"

"I got someone waiting at home for me staring out the door and I'll wanna stay in the zone till three all those calls ignored tomorrow she'll probably disown me happy no more keep falling into shadows. I'm playing in the shadows all night long So good to play with bad girls (I'm still young) They keep on saying hello I know what they want You'll find me in the shadows"

"If we're meant to be together, change the way you see the weather Live for now, forget forever"

"And I love being under the influence, under the influence of you And your voice sounds like it's an instrument Everything you say rings true"

"A song in my head and it won't leave me alone, I should have followed my friends, by now they're probably at home all warm and tucked up in bed Instead I'm stumbling home on my own with no charge on my phone in the east end of London"

"Maybe we should take another roll of the dice Can't believe we both let it fade away I want to stay for another day If you want to save us, give me a signal, anything will do"

"And I'm happy to admit that I lied and I'll admit that I ruined you're life You could never admit if you tried and you're so wrong, and you're so wrong And I'm happy to admit that I lied and I'll admit that I ruined you're life You could never admit if you tried that you're so wrong Until you stop lying to yourself I'll never stop lying to you And until I stop crying to myself, I'll never cry in front of you I'll fight the tallest giants and break the rules of science But I'll never stop lying to you and I've never said a word so true"

"I'm missing my halo Where did today go? Why does it rain so much when it says so? Let me show you all the beautiful things What do they know? Come taste the rainbow Always gonna live like it's my last day"

"There's light at the end of the tunnel There's fight at the heart of a struggle Your smile should've told me you're trouble No more, no more, no more You owned me when I told you I love you you buried all my worth with a shovel Your smile should've told me you're trouble No more, no more, no more No more goodbyes (So long, so long, so long now) No more white lies You used to be the one true thing in my world You told me that you loved me. You're in love with yourself Shoulda listen to my mother You messed around the others now you're dead to me I've been sleeping with the enemy"

"Wash the kisses off my neck and lock my past in the basement I've found your perfect replacement I've found something, never need your nothing again I've found something, never need your nothing again I've found something, never need your nothing again I've found something, never need your nothing again"

"Don't speak Don't speak no more Cos your eyes do the talking Don't speak Don't speak no more Cos your eyes do the talking You don't have to say nothing Say nothing Cos your eyes do the talking"

"Everything I promised you was there but I was late. Broke in two I used to blame the substance So confused but I carry no substance Lost in a cave like Sons of Mumford Kept moaning zoning in the comfort Now I blame myself Went downhill just to up my numbers You only need one, what's the point of hundreds? And I never did ask. (You said the answer would be "Yes".) I killed us, had tools to build us a castle but I never played chess Bad guess, made the wrong move Queen takes King, now I've been removed: out the back door like a famous actor Cut us in half like stupid tax laws"

"I gave up one day Such a stop one day I would stop one day, I was fallen I wake up one day, give a fuck one day I'm in love 'cause I hear you calling Nothing I can say to make you understand I guess I just have to call it The Evolution of Man The Evolution of Man The Evolution of Man It's better better It's better better It's better better that you didn't know the truth I'm getting better I'm getting better I'm living bigger"

"Lately, I'm shedding my snakeskin You know I've been changing for you lately It's time to make a fresh start It's time to make a fresh start"

"Impossible's possible I know 'cause I lost it all I know the price of my ego It's lethal I still got the hots for you"

"Standing in the light till it's over, out of our minds Someone had to draw a line We'll be coming back for you one day We'll be coming back for you one day"

"You don't have to whisper You don't have to whisper no more Just scream and we'll take you to heaven Scream and we'll light up the world If we can make the whole world hear us then I can see the whole world changing I wanna make the whole world hear us Would that be so crazy? If we can make the whole world hear us then I can see the whole world changing I wanna make the whole world hear us Would that be amazing?"

"Another lesson learnt Another page is turned Give in to your desire, say goodbye or play with fire Play with fire you'll get burnt Another lesson learnt Another page is turned It's time I have to fly and then you say those precious words Stay with me Stay with me Stay with me, stay with me for just one more day"

"If only I could fly away Revel in the moonlight Try to find a good life Find a way to break the chains Find a way to break the chains Struggle just to hear the call It's easy now, easy now Heaven is a mile away I'll burn it all and leave today"

"When life throws us obstacles and nothing seems fair at all impossible's possible 'cause you take us there Feelings ain't optional And these are our chronicles Impossible's possible And you take us there And true love isn't scared True love isn't scared True love isn't scared True love isn't scared"

"I may grow old but I'll never, grow, up (We may grow old but we never grow up) (We may grow old but we never grow up) (We may grow old but we never grow up) (We may grow old but we never grow, never grow)"

"[Her] When I look at you, yeah, there'll never be a day where I'll be afraid. When I look you, yeah, there'll never be a day when I doubt myself. [Him] I can't breathe, my heart's on fire, but you make me feel like life's just fine. Even when I'm looking in the mirror and I feel like I can't get by, I know that everything is gonna be okay from deep in your eyes."

"I for one, and one lasting reason, tell my kids the stakes Break the rules and go smash some records Make 'em learn your name (don't tell 'em) Even when they say you can't, you know you're Genghis Khan Break some hearts, respect the love and be big in Japan Fuck the beef, slow cook the brisket Take some risk, embrace the misfit Rock and roll, don't limp or be scared Look, go and change the way you kissed it Even if the leader of your generation messed up Run the world, down your drink, smile a bit, then rest up"

"And then you stepped into my life and changed my rainy day, ay ay. Now every rule I live my life by I can safely say It's all for you babe, I'll tell them straight It's all good today though we'll make mistakes And then come Tuesday we'll still be best mates"

"Ooh, I said I'd never let you down, You said you'd never let me down, And now I gotta let you let me leave. Ooh, I said I'd never let you down, You said you'd never let me down, And now I gotta let you let me leave."

"You'd like to meet her, take her home, fill her up with your testosterone but you won't get a chance to score There's a reason she wears her shades indoors (Why?) If you look closely there's something not right with her jaw She's chewin' her face like a carnivore with a piece of meat, and furthermore remove her glasses from her face: this female's lost in space Lost her sight, her eyes ain't right, eyeballs painted black not white"

"This was a strictly a one-nighter to delight us we both knew this must stay quiet It was vital we couldn't forget though We never let go we just held on tighter See I'm a lover not a fighter so I didn't fight the fact that I more than liked you"

"If only I had a Ferrari Then I'd be a Ken doll and she'd be Barbie We could ride together with the roof rolled down With the whole town jealous of my girl and my fast car"

"Hit the first stage of the hibernation This perfect darkness is a weird sensation Escape from a nation of twisted creatures where their features are lost in accrued stagnation Like a treasure chest I rest in a cave I have to be brave, there's too much to crave 'cause it hurts me dearly to leave the scheme Will I see more clearly when I lose the team?"

"World's getting hotter, not a lot you're gonna do Armageddon ensues and the rivers rise up (Chorus) There's all these monsters at work and they're burning burning burning They keep their hush (hush) they'll never stop earning Earth's needing us, it's just that no-one gives a flying fuck Why give a damn if the world's still turning, huh?"

"When the lights go out come and hunt me down, keep me in your line of sight Be my predator, I'll give in to ya Take a taste, do what you like Show me how to love ya Show me how to get you high Show me how to love ya I just wanna rock you right"

"To-ing fro-ing never knowing if I'm coming or I'm going living in the fast lane but our heartbeat's slowing"

"Now I'm going into darkness trying to find my light my heart is like an eclipse every hour's midnight Feel like time is running out I need to break free cos I'm going into darkness and you're the only one who can't see"

"Oh darling, let's stay up all night Drinking whisky, telling stories, I can keep you satisfied Oh darling, let's stay up all night Drinking whisky, telling stories, I can keep you satisfied Oh darling, let's stay up all night Drinking whisky, telling stories, I can keep you satisfied"

"Pushing my buttons again, want for your loving again Pushing my buttons again, want for your loving again, yeah Pushing my buttons again, want for your loving again Pushing my buttons again, want for your loving again It was like slow motion when you walked into the room. I sat there frozen, just sat back, enjoyed the view. If this the ocean you're some undiscovered species. You saved me from myself that night, believe me. Had so many questions on my mind. Where the hell you been all of my life? Straight out from the darkness to the light. You're the answer. You're the answer to the meaning of my life."

"Only one place we wanna be Only need the crew plus me Don't know who we're gonna see but I heard they play a couple CDs Eight quid for a G&T Probably gonna spill it on my jeans Don't really care, honestly 'cause I only need the crew plus me We stay (all night) All day (all night) UK (all night) Okay (all night) Just vibes (all night) We slide (all night) All day (all night) All night (all night)"

"You and me just click Just click, just click You and me just click You and me just click You and me just click You and me just click"

"It's just something I do Don't wanna kiss and tell I'll make it up to you And do it so well I can't do many things But one thing that I do For you, it's true I do it so well"

"'Cause we About it It's deep How we found it Sleep I doubt it When the sun hits your eyes and I'm with you"

"Run to, run to, run to, run Run together into something Run to, run to, run together into something new. Run to, run to, run to, run Run together into something Run to, run to, run together into something new."

"And we're all daydreaming now Escape to another world Live for another day Escape to another world Don't have to be told Don't have to grow old"

"Ask yourself what you really want from life Don't follow that crowd"

"No point standing alone No point wondering why No point getting it if you don't level it Gotta look 'em dead in the eye No point sitting at home Better just believe you can fly No point singing it if you're not ringing it Gotta look 'em dead in the eye"

"Take a bag with your clothes and leave your keys by the door 'cos she never wants to see you no more Never should have listened to the serpent You shot yourself in the foot again Take that sad little face and leave your pride at the door 'cos she never gonna touch you no more Never should have listened to the serpent You shot yourself in the foot again Face looks jaded Clothes look faded Keep walking on, my friend"

"Take my hand and don't let go Take my hand and don't let go oh no Come with me Temptation Avenue"

"How could I forget the day we met I had to date you, A couple months we were in love... Like Ross and Rachel, It went deranged, and then the chains... To leave, I hate you, It was kinda like that film where the Attraction's Fatal. You smash a plate, I slam the gate, (Yeah!, yeah!) You get irate, I turn up late, (We stuff our ammo) You scream and shout, I lock you out, (Who's in trouble now?) We call a truce and then we're back where we started. It's all good when we're on our best behaviour When the will turns sour it's like a scene out of Braveheart, Dark like Darth Vader, But still I love her, We fight, but there's light at the end of the tunnel."

"We been living in a world full of free love and the limit is the sky if we team up yeah, we run the world, we run the world"

"And it goes and it goes And it goes and it goes I got ten bags of funds, some rum and some dubstep Head off into the sunset, one step ahead of the game They've been attacking my brain, they ain't done yet Count to 100, open my eyes and it's fine again No sign of them, back in the open I'm hoping I'm reaching utopia Coping without her but it's all for the best No mess, let me digress One day soon, find room in my head to let another special person fully immerse themselves And we'll merge our worlds so perfectly This is paradise, certainly"