Whenever I write lyrics and an Americanism slips in, I always cut it straight out. I can't use the word 'babe,' for instance. It makes me cringe.
The perception that if you're not on 'Top Of The Pops' you're dead and buried is a good one for pop music, because 'TOTP' is a catalyst or barometer for pop success.
I've never recorded anyone else's songs. I'm not interested. If you gave me a song by Bono and Edge and promised me a number one hit with it I'd still say no. That, for me, is not the kind of success I want.
Just because you sell millions of records it doesn't guarantee bums on seats.
I was a big fan of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin.
Success isn't dependent on the market place, because I can't control that. It's about completing a good song.
At college I had a Saturday job in a hardware store and I got #1. When I came to London in 1966 and lived in a bedsit, I got a temporary job as a salesman in a C&A store. I don't know what I earned: enough to pay the rent, I imagine. Then, in 1967'68, I worked as a postal clerk for #10 a week.
I used to play music all night and sleep during the day. I was very career-minded. The music dominated everything and anything that interfered with that, I put a stop to it.
What I can't understand is why people still won't give me the credibility that I look for. If Mojo or any other of those magazines would give me the credit for only ever performing my own songs rather than someone like Rod Stewart singing other people's songs looking for success.
You see, I read reviews of people like Paul Simon, and they don't talk about the fact that he's looking old or whether he is fashionable; they talk about the music, which is how it should be.
The measure of success was writing a song, recording it and for it being in the hit parade in England. Success was about the postman walking up the garden whistling my song. I wasn't trying to conquer the world.
What I would hate to go through is what happened in the mid-90s playing in front of a half-empty theatre, which prompted me to say 'never again' when it came to Waterford. To go through that again in any of the places I call home would destroy me.
I'd go to meetings with record companies - CBS, Decca, EMI. They'd tell me to wear a pair of jeans and grow my hair and look normal. And I'd say, 'Sod that,' and storm out. And I do think that belligerence is important when you're young.
Song writing is very serious; it is hard.
I always take a teapot with me on tour. I suppose it's only natural that I've just written a song called 'Where Would We Be Without Tea?'
