Musician

Sometimes the most positive thing you can be in a boring society is absolutely negative.

If you ever want to know why I'm not on a record label, look at 'The X Factor!' Honestly, of all the people that strive to break barriers in music and do good things and write great lyrics, not one of them would ever pass the first round on any of these competitions.

I never wore a studded leather jacket, y'know. Ne-va!

Some song ideas absolutely require a kind of rigid discipline, and others require absolute chaotic abandon. The form is only valid if you know how to un-form it. I don't mean to sound like an intellectual here!

I find Lady Gaga hilarious. And I kind of like her. My heart's warmed to her.

The real color of my hair is mouse. I always want to be ginger, which I was when I was born, or blond, because I live in L.A., and I want to look like I go surfing without any physical effort.

My words are my bullets.

I love boating - not flash, 'noisy go fast' nonsense, but the general relaxation of it. My wife and I love to get in our little Wellcraft and go as far out to sea as we can, hopefully beyond land. That is the best thing you can ever do. It clears your psyche.

If anyone asks for your autograph they're showing you respect and give it back to them.

I'm not great at dealing with death, I have to say. I find death very hard: my mum, my dad, Sid Vicious. I'm not a monster; I feel it and it scares me. One death at a time, please, is all my heart will bear.

Just because people think politically different to you doesn't mean they're inhuman.

I like America's diversity and its landscapes.

I've done no harm to no one. In fact, I think I've improved the world.

I always find the mirror in the dressing room is where the best artists are.

I love America. I love Americans.

Punk was never about one particular clean-cut imagery... it's about many, many individuals coming very loosely together.

Obama's dense as a doorbell; not much going on up there - it's a wooden top.

I love books, and all the best ones are people analysing their own emotions. You can learn from that.

'Lollipop Opera' is the backdrop to Finsbury Park. A place that is very thriving, interracial and lot of music stores, Greek, Turkish, all sorts of immigrant music. It's utter Englishness. It blends the Jamaicans, the Irish. It's like what Jim Reeves did with American country music.

It's volatile, the marriage. Which one isn't? Nothing better than a good, full-on row. Get it all out. Say rude and nasty things. And then be sorry. Genuinely sorry, afterwards.