“I warm naturally to the drummer whose ideas and approach are strong, even if he doesn’t quite have the ability to carry them out.”

Second edition of Earthworks I have the more traditional compositional approach, namely I write a piece from the piano.

Sometimes I had to room with Tony Kaye and that was awful.

And we’d drink huge amounts of scotch and coke, which is a ghastly sweet drink… And now people don’t drink nearly as much, for good reason. We’re all a little wiser.

I don’t really remember a whole lot of sex, drugs and rock n’ roll, really.

I didn’t write any music at all, and then, I remember Jon Anderson being very insistent saying that there were two kinds of musicians: the ones who wrote music and the ones who didn’t.

One of the great things about having good players in your band is that you just ask them questions. You can pick up some good information that way.

If I was hearing something I couldn’t do, I would figure out how to do it.

We used to drink an awful lot of alcohol.

I listen to Bill Stewart play the drums and when I have finished doing that, I listen to Bill Stewart.

Entertainment is about telling everybody that everything is alright but music is on the side of the upsetters and that’s where I’m at.

Holding on to some of your uniqueness is the trick instead of surrendering it at the Academy of Contemporary We’re Gonna Make You a Star.

At the end of the whole day of working with people you want some privacy.

You learn so much about music from all the people you surround yourself with – good, bad and indifferent. It’s extremely hard to be specific.

So I have the classic amateur’s technique; I know some very tricky bits and I have large gaping holes.

We were from totally different social backgrounds. This is what is very hard for an American to understand, but we could have been five guys from Mars.

And I like messing around in the engine room of music. Seeing what happens in the rhythm section area.

Plus I am being hounded by all the fabulous new drummers, Bill Stewart at the head of the pack.

A rock band used to be four guys and a drummer. Now it’s five guys sitting around reading manuals!

I don’t want no drummer. I set the tempo.

Where I come from we say that rhythm is the soul of life, because the whole universe revolves around rhythm, and when we get out of rhythm, that’s when we get into trouble.

The performance is silent. The readers hear the sounds of the words and the beat of the sentences only in their inner ear. Silent drummers on noiseless drums. An amazing performance in an amazing theater.

I found out I got ‘The Little Drummer Girl’ and my BAFTA nomination in quick succession, and I just didn’t expect it to be like that. I thought there would be a lot more time in between. It’s been an overwhelming experience.

PimpCo is a little business I’ve got, which basically offers drummers the affordable opportunity to make their drums that little bit more bespoke.

You know what, the drummer is my manager. He’s busy. And I’m busy. I don’t need the dough, though. But having said that, there’s a limit to how much bad music I wanna play.