“Every record is a portrait of the band at that time.”

Music is the one thing that has been consistently there for me. It hasn’t let me down.

Every musician wants to do something which will hold up for a long time, and I guess we did it with ‘Stairway to Heaven.’

The greatest satisfaction is not the decoration. It is knowing that I am able to help someone who needs help.

I don’t like to tell people what format they can get things in, or say, “I’m only going to release this on vinyl and nothing else. You have to come to my world.” I don’t like to say that to people either. But, I do think there’s a loss of romance.

This week, I’m a gypsy. Maybe next week it’ll be glitter rock.

I bet you can’t play slide piano.

I’m not interested in turning anybody on to anybody that I’m turned on to… if people want to find things, they find them themselves.

There’s such a wealth of arts and styles within the guitar… flamenco, jazz, rock, blues. You name it, it’s there. In the early days my dream was to fuse all those styles. Now composing has become just as important.

The only term I won’t accept is “genius.”

The blues appealed to me, but so did rock. The early rockabilly guitarists like Cliff Gallup and Scotty Moore were just as important to me as the blues guitarists.

There’s music that can affect people in their lives, and they will always relate to the point that they heard it and experienced it, either if you’re playing it or you’re receptive, as an audience.

Crowley didn’t have a very high opinion of women, and I don’t think he was wrong.

I’m over 30 now, but I didn’t expect to be here.

My guitar style was developed during that 10-year period. That’s me. That’s the way I play, and I don’t wish to play any other way. Our own individual identities are firmly stamped on this album.

My vocation is more in composition really than anything else – building up harmonies using the guitar, orchestrating the guitar like an army, a guitar army.

I spend a lot of time near water.

I have seen so many bands and musicians fade away, especially the ones in my early days that treated me and my bands with contempt for no other reason than that they were headlining the show, not all though, with great exceptions such as Slade and Vinegar Joe.

There is no rule in the pink-triangle guide to coming out that you must wear a rainbow flag cap and organise a full band parade.

When I hooked up with them I was still going to Narcotics Anonymous. But they were never into drugs. If it weren’t for the band, I think I’d still be getting high.

I just kind of thought about doing this my whole life. I never doubted myself once. I’ve always been singing, and I’ve always wanted to be on tour with a rock band.

And this is the Anarchistic definition of the State: the embodiment of the principle of invasion in an individual, or a band of individuals, assuming to act as representatives or masters of the entire people within a given area.

We started with Denny Cordell, and he was a great record producer. He knew exactly how to take a band that knew absolutely nothing, and guide you without trying to tell you what to do.

I remember Glenn Miller coming to me once, before he had his own band, saying, How do you do it? How do you get started? It’s so difficult. I told him, I don’t know but whatever you do don’t stop. Just keep on going.

There is a constant battle between Cogsy and I as who’s the biggest psycho in the band