Published in the March 2013 issue, on sale any day now
Interviewed December 19, 2012
If youâre going to be a vegetarian, you really do have to like lentils. Otherwise youâre fucked.
All walls are great if the roof doesnât fall.
My dad taught me to always expect someone coming around the bend on the wrong side of the road, right at me. I was always to assume that would be the case. He tried to teach me to be very suspicious of people â not to trust. I think he took it a bit too far when I was a kid. I had to unlearn that one.
Itâs much better to attempt to trust people until they prove you wrong.
I only started singing because I couldnât find anybody else to sing. Everybody I asked was a bloody idiot.
Twenty thousand people can all look like one big mush, but actually itâs really interesting how you can walk onstage and within ten minutes feel what their vibe is.
When we first started supporting R.E.M., there were some gigs we played where people were ordering chicken dinners, and that kind of fucked with my head.
I was in hospital a lot when I was a kid âcause I was born with my left eye shut, and they had to take muscle from my ass and graft it to make a muscle that would open the eyelid. So I had four or five operations, starting when I was very young. I mustâve started complaining by the time I was five. âLook, youâve got to do it,â my parents said. âIf you go, weâll buy you whatever you want, okay? What do you want?â I said, âI want a red tracksuit.â And they got me a red tracksuit, tops and bottoms, and I was happy to go back to the hospital even knowing that I was going to go under the general anesthetic, wake up, and throw up everywhere. I loved that red tracksuit. I wore that red tracksuit until it looked so small that it was ridiculous on me.
Respect is if youâre having a political argument with someone, just before you get to the point where you call them a fascist, you sort of step back and wonder how on earth theyâve ended up at this point of complete ignorance and stupidity.
When I was a student, my bank used to cut off my credit card all the time. I could never seem to stop bouncing checks. I was always on the phone with the bank. It was a very satisfying day after I signed a big record deal, when I went to the bank and paid off all my debts. The banker came across the desk to shake my hand and I told him to fuck off. How did he react? I think he was quite used to it.
Every time I go to the ATM and it asks how much I want, I say, âGive the most you can give me.â
Iâll go to the bookshop in town, grab three or four books of poetry, sit in the coffee shop, and read those for a while. Itâs like loosening up your muscles before a workout.
My grandfather would come to our house in the countryside, borrow one of our bikes, and disappear. Heâd come back after dark and we had no idea where heâd been. If he ran into anybody, heâd just ask where the good nightclub was. He did that right up into his nineties.
I donât feel disappointment anymore. But I do feel the pressure of time marching on.
I was sitting with my son the other day and his friend, whoâs eleven, and I said, âOkay guys, do the math. Work out how many seconds youâve got left.â Took âem a while, but they got there.
Kids teach you to lighten up, which for me was very handy because I wasnât very light at the time. They were a blessing for that.
I think what makes people ill a lot of the time is the belief that your thoughts are concrete and that youâre responsible for your thoughts. Whereas actually â the way I see it â your thoughts are what the wind blows through your mind.
It takes a long time for an audience to relax on Monday nights.
Build gaps in your life. Pauses. Proper pauses.
Getting everything you want has nothing to do with anything.
If we were going out and just playing the hits and shit, then I would feel very differently about things. But weâre playing new things, and some of itâs very difficult to play, actually. The idea that twenty thousand people come and watch us do some of this music thatâs pretty bonkers and certainly not on the radio⊠thatâs a good thing, man. We played in Phoenix, and Ed and I came offstage and looked at each other. Did you see that?
I canât imagine twenty years ahead because Iâm sort of here right now.
