Ian Brown

I was really into punk when I was about 14.

Everybody is a star. It's true. And if you've got a light, don't let it go out. 'Cos some people sink under.

People tend to settle for the fiver rather than going for the pot of gold.

I've never chatted up a girl in me life. I've always let girls come to me. I've never approached a girl to chat her up.

I can't think of anyone who's reformed for art's sake. That's why the Roses will never reform.

In March 1977, I taped the single 'Career Opportunities' off Piccadilly Radio, which was the '70s equivalent of downloading, and then the album came out in April 1977.

Northern soul was huge in Manchester in the '70s and '80s; I went to a lot of all-nighters.

We started out to finish groups like U2 - that was what it was all about.

We're all anti-royalist, anti-patriarch. Cos it's 1989. Time to get real.

I love harmonicas - old blues players like Sonny Boy Williamson.

Oasis are okay, but they're like The Sun: base.

People in Russia learned English off the Beatles. People in Japan learned English off the Stone Roses. Noel Gallagher says music can't change the world, but the Roses made him want to start a group, so it changed his world.

The Beatles were great; we know that. But we were trying to do a new thing. Why do we need to recreate the Sixties?

I feel like the Ryan Giggs of music.

When you live in Manchester and it's raining every day, you've got to imagine the sun sometimes. When you're brought up in concrete, you aim for the green leaves. And when you get to the green leaves, you yearn again for concrete.

My sister bought me the Koran in 1990. I always thought the stories in it were magical.

I give thanks for everything that's ever happened to me and for everything I've got.

You're never alone on the dole in Manchester.

I'm only really good at making music. I wasn't convinced when I started out, but then I heard the first Stone Roses' LP.

By 1993, the Stone Roses had become this huge, beautiful cruise ship just floating about in the middle of nowhere with no captain.

At primary school, I thought I was George Best. Then I got to secondary school, and it was more serious.

We wrote 'Stellify' for Rihanna, but as we got to the end of writing it, I thought, 'You know what? I'm gonna keep this for myself. We'll give her another one.' She'd have probably sung it better, but it is too good for me not to do it.

One person might perceive me as godlike, and the next might think I'm a northern thug. I don't think I've done myself any favours... but I swear I've not had a proper fight since I was 14.

Some of the kids who discovered me from my 'F.E.A.R.' record or one of the U.N.K.L.E. tunes have said, 'I don't even like the Roses; I love your solo stuff.' I buzz off that.

Belief outweighs talent. Self-belief's got me everything, self-belief.

I'd like to write songs for other people, see things from a different perspective. I'd like to watch things from the dugout instead of the pitch.

Getting a grey beard's not cool.

I was skint, and I had to move back to my mum and dad's house, back into the room I shared with my brother when I was a kid. I kept getting people on the streets telling me that they loved me; it didn't mean anything to me because I was still borrowing tenners off my pensioner father to go and get some chicken.

You'll never find a Manchester band slagging off another Manchester band, but within each Manchester band, people will rip each other apart: Mondays, Smiths, New Order, Roses, Oasis.

They've had a hard life, the Oasis brothers. They've done really well to be semi-normal. It's always sad when your dirty linen is brought out in public.

I see The Stone Roses in '89 as Technicolor: we were all about joy and possibilities of life.

I've always said prayers.

I started managing myself in October 2004, and since then, it's gone up and up.

I used to be one of those kids who couldn't keep my mouth shut.

My biggest fault is that I give people too much credit. Then they let you down. I'm 99.9 per cent perfect - that's how I look at myself and, therefore, everybody else too.

I love people, me, I believe in people. I love people too much.

Stardom's transitory. Nothing really changes except people's attitudes.

Putting another human being above yourself isn't healthy. I think it's capitalistic.

Hell is being stuck in a lift with Elton John and the Queen Mother.

I went to a friend's 40th in Manchester, and there was a karaoke machine, and no one was having a go. My mate said, 'No one's singing because you're in the room.' I said, 'Who am I, Frank Sinatra?' They made me sing flipping 'My Star' to a backing track that sounded like '80s Roxy Music. It was pretty embarrassing, but I did it.

I love karaoke - I usually do Blondie's 'Heart Of Glass,' or 'Try A Little Tenderness.'

It's a horrible name, Coldplay. It doesn't conjure up any positive thoughts.

I like a lot of that Chicago stuff, house music.

I don't actually personally get off on guitar music.

I'm solo, and I love being solo. I believe I went through the Roses so I could become a solo music-maker. That's what I believe.

Just because I'm a successful singer who's loved and has been loved for years doesn't mean I'm sitting behind electric gates in my own fantasy land.

I thought it would be more interesting to make a musical autobiography than an actual autobiography.

I am gentle. I think nearly everyone who makes music is sensitive - I don't care how hard they pretend they are.

When The Stone Roses first came out, the early reviews called me 'simian.' I had to look that up at the time.

When the ravens leave the Tower, England shall fall, they say. We want to be there shooting the ravens.