- There has always been a strong relationship between music and religion. It is because they both plug directly into the heart and can have real power for good or evil.
- I'm an artist who works incredibly slowly.
- I have always loved R.E.M.'s music and respected their commitment to social change.
- When I left [Genesis] there was some angst and I think everyone thought I was destroying their careers, but as soon as I left, the band sold a whole lot more records.
- [why he demanded to write all the lyrics for the last album he made with Genesis] There are very few books written by a committee, and for a very good reason.
- Music is a universal language, it draws people together and proves, as well as anything, the stupidity of racism.
- The flap over The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) is absurd. If people's faith is so weak that it can be destroyed by a film, then it really isn't much to begin with. I think people may find themselves reviewing their own lives and their own points of view on religion as a result of the film. I'm very proud to have been a part of it.
- Just to stay in an all-white, all-male, all-middle-class preserve would be very boring for me and very boring for the people who listen to what I do.
- African artists are strong, charismatic and compelling, and I think they hold people's attention.
- Radiohead, for me, are one of the great bands and one of the reasons is that they're always trying to innovate and push back boundaries, both in their musical work and in their video work.
- [about the "Sledgehammer" video] I've always loved animation since I was a kid and you can do with it anything you can imagine. The idea was to design something that really could hold up to repeated viewing.
- [in 2005] There is so much pressure on musicians to look youthful. I've turned my back on my wilder days. I'm much more relaxed now.
- There is something childlike about the basic concept that poverty might be history, that by doing something, some lives might be saved. I would argue that it doesn't matter how many records get sold or how many balding semi-retired musicians like myself get an audience, even if one life gets saved, it's better than sitting on our fat arses complaining about things.
- John Lennon was definitely one of my heroes. I think he always wrote from his heart. He was a very complicated individual, but there's an honesty about his songwriting that I think makes it very powerful. Sometimes it's very simplistic, childlike and naive; and that is what gives it some of its strength.
- I think that anyone who doesn't have some sense of idealism when they're young is really missing out a bit of their humanity, because you have the chance to go into the world and feel, quite rightly, that it is soon going to be yours and you can change it. I think that's what my generation did with The Beatles at the front of it.
- Working with the tours and meeting all the people that felt their lives had literally been saved by Amnesty made it seem like such a simple, elegant and powerful idea. I think that it is a wonderful organization that really deserves a lot of support.
- [speaking at the BT Digital Music Awards in 2006] I would say to artists at the beginning of their career in this business: own your name, own your website, own your rights. There's a future with a record business, which I think does a great job sometimes, but as a service industry and not as owners of creative talent. But it's only if artists are smart enough, which traditionally we've never been, to act together and to work together that we're going to see that sort of future.
- From the pain comes the suffering, from the suffering comes the dream, from the dream comes the vision, from the vision comes the people, from the people comes the power, from the power comes the change, but if the world could have one father, the man we would want to be our father is Madiba, Mr Nelson Mandela.
- Never before has an artist been able to reach out and build an audience so easily - without needing record companies and their marketing departments. Equally, you've never been able to explore all kinds of new music in the instant way the Internet allows.
- New technology has always excited me.
- I co-founded OD2 with Charles Grimsdale as I thought there were many exciting opportunities for digitally distributed music. As a musician, I believe strongly that all artists should have access to this powerful new means of getting music to people. I was convinced digital music was going to be the main means of distributing music when we set that firm up. I've been surprised how long it has taken.
- I must be getting to that awards time of life; it's God's way of telling you you're getting on.
- [on why he left Genesis] It was really a decision to get out of the music business so it wasn't a decision to go solo. Our first child had just been born and she was in an incubator for three weeks, at the same time the band were trying to finish an album off, for me there was no question of priorities. I hated the feeling that in two years time I would know exactly where I'm going to be and what I'm going to be doing, I wanted a sense of freedom, so I just stopped everything for about a year and worked on my vegetable garden very unsuccessfully but enthusiastically.
- He appears in a lot of writing that I've done over the years because of the groove with which he was associated, which is the Bo Diddley rhythm. He was really one of the first people to make an African element a central part of pop music and it was done with a lot of feel and a lot of style. I was sad to see him on the departed list.
- The music business, the way I view it, it's dead in its old model and there are lots of interesting things crawling out of the corpse.
- The only drug I was interested in was acid, but I was too frightened by my dreams in regular hours to contemplate that.
- [on the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq] This is a fundamental issue of life and death and I very much think the Prime Minister is in the wrong. I'm also sure George Bush [George W. Bush] is an affable bloke but he's highly dangerous and I wish America was in the hands of someone else. To put oil interests ahead of human life is appalling. War is always terrible but unjustified war is obscene and on present evidence that is what we are facing. People want peace and I think it's great that the Mirror is leading this campaign. I think the consequences of this war would be the biggest threat to world peace in my lifetime. Blair [British PM Tony Blair] has got to get it right. To take action without UN backing would be inviting disaster by setting the Muslim world against the West. If we are taking a moral position why did we arm Iraq when they were killing the Kurds? If it's because of weapons of mass destruction why isn't North Korea higher on the list? Not that I'd support action there. And if it's a principle of what Iraq has done to its own people why do we bend over for China? I'm sure Bush believes he is removing a scourge but he has never done one thing in office against the interests of the oil lobby who paid for a large part of the election. I don't actually believe Tony Blair is focused on oil but if he knows more than we do I wish he would tell us because there's no justification so far for taking life. War with Iraq would be an aggressive, uncalled-for action. It's good the Prime Minister is prepared to stick to his principles, going against public opinion, because you elect leaders in part for their conscience. I just think it's terrible that on this of all issues he is making a stand which separates him from the nation. I think Tony Blair is following his conscience but I believe he is misguided. It could cost him the next election and I think he's aware of that. I'd personally be sad if they lost because Labour has done a lot for health and education, but an unjust war would be enough to lose my vote. I'd like to see a reinforced UN weapons inspection team in Iraq and disarmament much more in line with the French and German proposals. There is a slogan which says: "Peace is what happens when you respect the rights of others". Iraqis have rights too.
- Sting is right in what he says about The X Factor UK (2004). If I was a TV commissioner, I wouldn't take the show off the air, but I'd put on one that showcases new songwriting talent, featuring unique voices. Doing covers, impersonating other artists should not be the only option or goal to aspire to.
- When I started, you couldn't get signed unless the label thought you could sell 100,000 records. It took us two years playing gigs to get signed.
- The worst brief for an artist is to be told they can do anything. I have always believed that artists are a lot more creative if you tell them what they can't do.
- [on taking ten years to make an album] If you're looking at the movement of the Earth it's a very short space of time. But you know, the older you get, it's more about quality and less about frequency.
- [on dressing as a flower in Genesis] Horticulture has a lot going for it.
- My kids came with me to see one of these bands that recreate early Genesis stuff. They said to me afterwards, "Dad, if you can make a living like that, there's hope for us!"
- "Heroes" is one of those classic songs . . . it's one of my favorite Bowie [David Bowie] songs and I was a Bowie fan right from the beginning.
- I love Radiohead, from the onset, pretty much. The Bends was done up the road from us in the West Country. And so I had a conversation with Thom Yorke who said he was interested in doing the Wallflower song, so I was really excited to hear that. Besides writing great songs with wonderful sounds, they are always unafraid to push themselves as arrangers and musicians and writers and I love that about them.
- Something happens with age. You're becoming more yourself, whether you like it or not. You lose some high notes. You're not aspiring to be someone else. You listen to Dylan [Bob Dylan], Randy Newman or Tom Waits, and to how their voices have evolved over the years, and, uh, you get a sense that there's more grain and texture, and less trying for this or that.
- [on "Scratch My Back"] I've always been a songwriter first and foremost, and with X Factor's [The X Factor UK (2004)] stress on performance, I felt the craft of songwriting has got rather overlooked. So I thought, if we could put a twist on the covers thing, make it a genuine exchange and a dialogue with other musicians, rather than a homage to just one song, then we could create something different.
- A lot of songs come with a time stamp. I remember where I was when I first heard "Hey Joe" or "Love Me Do". They become like sound traps, because pop introduced to songwriting the idea that sound was as important as the notes, the harmony and the rhythm.
- [on "Scratch My Back"] I wanted to let these songs speak, so I become personally minimal in their presentation. Left to my own devices, I tend to put layers on top, I fuss too much. So, early on with this, I decided to make rules. No drums or guitars. Just chamber instruments, keyboards and brass.
- It's a lot easier making emotional miserable music than it is making emotional happy music - joy is a much harder fish to catch.
- Charlie Gillett was such a benign godfather to so many artists who have fallen under the name of world music. Bumping into Charlie was always one of my regular delights at Womad. There are many artists around the world who owe a good slice of their income to Charlie's enthusiasms. His generous and good nature, fired by his passion, was a beacon of light in the music world and a rare and wonderful example to all of us involved.
- I've always loved artwork and album art. I think it's been a huge part of what people identify and feel about the music and the records. I used to love gatefold sleeves... when you would sit with a new record and open it up it was just a precious moment. Now we've gone into this digital world a lot of that has been lost.
- I admire artists that can create joy. I think I've done it a couple of times, but it's not regularly on the menu. Melancholy comes a lot easier. But I have a lot of respect for good pop music that's done well. Smart writing and good grooves, good sounds.
- I've not been bored but then I've also made decisions to have an interesting life rather than trying to maintain a successful career. And they are slightly different paths. I have interest in technology and benefit projects that go along with the music. Now I know mathematicians and filmmakers, pioneering medical researchers and all sorts of people from all sorts of backgrounds. One of the big buzzes has always been brainstorming with a bunch of people smarter than myself and I get to do that quite a lot on quite a lot of different subjects.
- I think MP3 is a giant step backwards in that we all spend a lot of time trying to make things sound really good and then it gets compressed. But I like that sense of it being a much freer medium ... technology has very often shaped the music [such as] the first singles having the physical limitations of the format determining the length of music. Those physical limitations in a way shaped the way music was composed. I think suddenly that has been unleashed and I think freedom is generally a very scary concept for artists.
- I can remember where I was when I first heard Hendrix's (Jimi Hendrix) 'Hey Joe', which was at school in a particular room upstairs and it was, in fact, in the next-door room. And my ear perked up and I went in and listened to it and just had to find out about who this artist was. I think particularly when you're growing up, songs are like memory stamps. And I think people go through life and they have these intense experiences that are really beautiful or really horrible that just get locked into a certain song.
- I was extremely lucky in 1967, when I was 17 years old, to go and see Otis Redding perform at the Ram Jam Club in Brixton in London. When he came on, it was like the sun coming out. It was just this amazing voice, totally in command, great band, great grooves and passion that permeated everything. I think he's a supreme interpreter, and what a heart.
- The first record I bought when I saved up my pocket money was 'With The Beatles'. 'Please, Please Me' was coming over the radio. I would sit in the back of my parents' car when we were on these long drives down to the coast. And what people forget, I think, is that at the time, it was really rebellious, rough, mischievous and full of life, and irresistible to any young person. The Beatles were a huge influence as I was growing up, and continued to be as there was all that revolution around their success.
- Free expression and human rights have been the life-blood of so much of the work I've done in the last few decades and Amnesty's campaigning has been a life-changing part of that. Those of us who have the eyes and ears of the media have a responsibility to amplify the voices of the voiceless. I'd be delighted if everyone who comes to one of my concerts picks up some Amnesty literature and checks out their work.
- [on Lana Del Rey's "Video Games"] It was actually Charlie Winston, who's a wonderful singer that we have, who turned me on to this track and I'm in love with it at the moment. I think it's a perfect pop song.
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