Ian Brown

I gave it up three weeks before my black belt, foolishly. I got to my third brown belt and must have trained for 18 months but never went for it. I was nearly 18 and got this thing in my head about, ' Who are they to grade me?' Trying to be a rebel when I should have done it. It's my only regret, not going for a black belt.

I'd never been paid for the first Roses LP - it was 2002 before we received any royalties.

Maybe if you see me begging on the streets, you might find me doing The Stone Roses the next day.

I feel like I've established myself as a music maker in my own right.

It is a fact that everyone's got a limited run in music - but who's to say how long that run lasts? I used to think that there would be no way I'd still be in music when I was 40. I used to think anyone who was 40 was an old man, and they probably shouldn't be doing it anymore.

You're never going to improve on a Michael Jackson song if you cover it.

Honestly, going solo is the second best thing that's ever happened to me after my kids.

Everything I've ever achieved, I've done on my terms.

I'd like to change the world. Eradicate poverty, racism, and sexism... all the usual things.

People have to realise you don't help African children singing along to 60-year-old men playing their tunes from 40 years ago.

Permacultures - where you use the immediate environment to grow food - should be mandatory.

We need to ban all air-freighted food. Carrots from Holland. Potatoes from Egypt. It's got to stop.

We should be growing carrots up the side of the Empire State Building or Big Ben.

My wife is Mexican, and she's really influenced me: She's got an impressive collection of Mexican music.

I started doing karate when I was 11.

I liked him, that Jarvis Cocker. I like the fact he was androgynous, he could appeal to everybody. He wasn't just a lad pretending to be a thug.

I don't like to play anywhere with a banner for Carlsberg or vodka or whatever. I'm not a drinker myself, and I don't like feeling like I'm working for the liquor companies.

I'm lucky enough to be one of them music makers who can do a dance festie or a rock festie.

I was jailed for using words that I still dispute. Anyone who's ever met me will tell you that I'm not a violent person.

People want to adulate people.

The jails are full of kids from kids' homes. You're 16 years old, and you're out on the street. How you going to fend for yourself at 16 if you've not had an education? You're going to turn to crime.

I spent the summer of '88 indoors, writing 'Shoot You Down,' 'Bye Bye Badman,' and 'Don't Stop.'

Even me mum can't tell me what to do.

I wasn't on stage to be worshipped or for people to look up to me. I was with the crowd.

The Roses should have made it as the biggest band since The Beatles, but we didn't.

We feel we're the only British group worth exporting since the Sex Pistols, definitely.

England's a small nation, and the pop music industry is built on fashion.

'Psychedelic' means mind-expanding.

I went into jail with absolutely no respect whatsoever for authority, and I came out with even less.

I've got six solo albums. I've been round the world three times. I don't even think about the Roses.

I feel like the Roses were a great group, but I never wanted to try to do it again. I knew I couldn't get a band that would compare to the Roses, that would have an impact like the Roses.

Since we were kids, we grow up believing that astronauts are heroes - that to go up in a rocket is a heroic thing. These guys are bigger than movie stars. To me, it's... all a well-dressed-up lie, basically. There's billions spent on rockets up there, and there's millions starving down here. It don't make sense to me.

If I was in the gutter, and my kids lived on the kerb, I'd go and get a job in B&Q before I'd reform the Roses. I gave everything I had to the Stone Roses and ended up hitting a brick wall. I'm never going to give anyone a foothold on that wall again.

I wrote a lot of lyrics in prison, but they'd all be like, 'Crawls upon the shoulders, hatred in the eyes.' I wrote about 50 songs in there that were all about jail. I've come out and thought, 'I've only served eight weeks; I can't really write a concept album about jail.'

With the Roses, I knew we were great; I felt that we would achieve something. On my own, I had no idea.

We believe that anyone can do anything, and everyone's a star. And that's evident from the shows we do. It just feels like a whole bunch of people in a room celebrating something - maybe just being alive.

I like the fact that a group can become successful, and by way of what you are, you can show up all the other people who are around you.

I never wanted to be a pop singer, but I always watched pop programs and knew I could do better than the people I was seeing.

I'd love to see the world without liquor for a week.

We're against hypocrisy, lies, bigotry, show business, insincerity, phonies, and fakers.

Even on songs we've got that are about a girl, there's always something there that's a call to insurrection.

We're the most important group in the world.

One thing I've always loved and rated me dad for is that, because of him, I've never seen the Queen's Christmas speech.

I actually was able to give up shopping in February '99.

I always loved Oasis because when they came out, they did express that they loved us, and they saw that we did it, and they thought they could do it, too.

With the Stone Roses, I always thought we'd be successful because we had some great songs.

I've not thought about the Stone Roses since we quit. How many LPs do I have to make to stop people talking about it?

When I was 9, I was into T. Rex, Gary Glitter, and Alice Cooper. I knew The Beatles because my nan introduced me to them, but T. Rex was the first band I got into myself. I got 'Metal Guru' a few months after hearing 'Children of the Revolution' in Pwllheli in North Wales at a market.

Every time I do interviews, they ask me about the same things - poverty, war, and the power of the church.

If you want to call me a Karaoke King, I'll take it.