- Everyone loves you when you've got a hit and when you're on the way down there aren't that many friends around. Value your real friends. It can be a lethal and heartless business. You have to be tough to keep doing it. Follow your heart, be true to yourself, don't do things just for the money and you'll be alright.
- Drugs can be good for creativity but they can also be bad for it. I don't want to be flippant because there are two sides to it. I don't want it to look like I'm saying: 'Don't take drugs, kids.' I've had experience of both.
- I loved glam rock when I was really young. Then, when I became a teenager, I bought Jailbreak by Thin Lizzy and The Story Of The Who. Those were amazing records and I still love them today.
- Screamadelica is known as a dance album but a lot of it is quiet and gentle - even something like Higher Than The Sun has a certain atmosphere.
- There's a lot of feeling on it. It's quite melancholic in places but also beautiful, melodic and ecstatic - and I'm not just talking about the drug. Moving On Up has an ecstatic feeling. (On Screamadelica)
- Screamadelica couldn't have happened without acid house and acid house couldn't have happened without ecstasy. That was the culture of the time and the energy was coming from the acid house clubs. We were inspired by that scene and mixed it up with rock'n'roll but the drugs aren't the muse. They can give you a bit of energy when you've been working for weeks in the studio but the creativity comes from yourself. If cocaine, ecstasy and speed made everyone great then everyone would be writing great books and making great films.
- To see Van Morrison walk on stage and sing Astral Weeks was out of this world. I never thought I'd see it. It was like he had something to prove. It was a big inspiration for us to do the Screamadelica show - to see a man who has never looked back do an old album with such integrity and sincerity was an inspiration.
- I look at Nick and he's as excited by the new Bad Seeds record as he probably was when he started The Birthday Party. That's inspiring and beautiful. If you can maintain that sense of wonder... If you're still excited by what you do, you're inspired to keep making new music. (On Nick Cave)
- I want to write a great love song. You know when you hear Gram and Emmylou singing 'Love Hurts'? The feeling: defeated and broken. I want to marry that with an ecstatic feeling, and if you get that sadness and ecstasy together in the same song, people are crying but they're also wanting to put their hands in the air.
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