That's the shock: All cliches are true. The years really do speed by. Life really is as short as they tell you it is. And there really is a God - so do I buy that one? If all the other cliches are true... Hell, don't pose me that one.
Strangely, some songs you really don't want to write.
Frankly, if I could get away with not having to perform, I'd be very happy. It's not my favorite thing to do.
I'm well past the age where I'm acceptable. You get to a certain age and you are forbidden access. You're not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines, you're not going to get played on radio and you're not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth.
Funk, I don't think I have anything to do with funk. I've never considered myself funky.
I had to resign myself, many years ago, that I'm not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does.
The Americans at heart are a pure and noble people; things to them are in black and white. It's either 'rawk' or it's not. We Brits putter around in the grey area.
You get to a certain age, and you are forbidden access. You're not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines; you're not going to get played on radio, and you're not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth.
But I've got to think of myself as the luckiest guy. Robert Johnson only had one album's worth of work as his legacy. That's all that life allowed him.
I think Mick Jagger would be astounded and amazed if he realized that to many people he is not a sex symbol, but a mother image.
I'm looking for backing for an unauthorized auto-biography that I am writing. Hopefully, this will sell in such huge numbers that I will be able to sue myself for an extraordinary amount of money and finance the film version in which I will play everybody.
There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It's always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.
I feel confident imposing change on myself. It's a lot more fun progressing than looking back. That's why I need to throw curve balls.
The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.
When you think about it, Adolf Hitler was the first pop star.
I change my mind a lot. I usually don't agree with what I say very much. I'm an awful liar.
I'm very at ease, and I like it. I never thought I would be such a family-oriented guy; I didn't think that was part of my makeup. But somebody said that as you get older you become the person you always should have been, and I feel that's happening to me. I'm rather surprised at who I am, because I'm actually like my dad!
Confront a corpse at least once. The absolute absence of life is the most disturbing and challenging confrontation you will ever have.
I'm not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman. I'm living on.
Questioning my spiritual life has always been germane to what I was writing. Always. It's because I'm not quite an atheist and it worries me. There's that little bit that holds on: 'Well, I'm almost an atheist. Give me a couple of months.'
However, there's no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums.
All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.
The skin of my character in 'The Man Who Fell to Earth' was some concoction, a spermatozoon of an alien nature that was obscene and weird-looking.
I was born in London 1947, after the war. A real wartime baby. I went to school in Brixton, and then I moved up to Yorkshire, which is in the north of England. I lived on the farms up there.
There's a schizoid streak within the family anyway so I dare say that I'm affected by that. The majority of the people in my family have been in some kind of mental institution, as for my brother he doesn't want to leave. He likes it very much.
Music itself is going to become like running water or electricity. So it's like, just take advantage of these last few years because none of this is ever going to happen again. You'd better be prepared for doing a lot of touring because that's really the only unique situation that's going to be left.
I think in the '70s that there was a general feeling of chaos, a feeling that the idea of the '60s as 'ideal' was a misnomer. Nothing seemed ideal anymore. Everything seemed in-between.
I'm wallowing in the whole idea of just being a guy out there with a band, with songs. It's a real enjoyment.
The truest form of any form of revolutionary Left, whatever you want to call it, was Jack Kerouac, E.E. Cummings, & Ginsberg's period. Excuse me, but that's where it was at.
You would think that a rock star being married to a supermodel would be one of the greatest things in the world. It is.
Frankly, I mean, sometimes the interpretations I've seen on some of the songs that I've written are a lot more interesting than the input that I put in.
I still derive immense pleasure from remembering how many hod-carrying brickies were encouraged to put on lurex tights and mince up and down the high street, having been assured by know-it-alls like me that a smidgen of blusher really attracted the birds.
I'm very good at what I do, and I don't turn my hand to something unless I'm very good at it, frankly.
Everything I read about hitting a midlife crisis was true. I had such a struggle letting go of youthful things and learning how to exist and have enthusiasm while settling into the comfort of an older age.
I would dream. I focused all my attention on going to America. The subculture, James Dean, the rock n' roll, the beat writers.
I wanted to be Gerry Mulligan, only, see, I didn't have any kind of technique. So I thought, well, baritone sax is kind of easier; I can manage that - except I couldn't afford a baritone, so I bought an alto, which was the same fingering.