My parents, especially my mother, were no influence on me whatsoever.

You know, I was such a big Beatles fan, and when I'd buy a new album I'd invariably hate it the first time I heard it 'cause it was a mixture of absolute joy and absolute frustration. I couldn't grasp what they'd done, and I'd hate myself for that.

We're horribly mundane, aggressively mundane individuals. We're the ninjas of the mundane, you might say.

Anyway, I collapsed in France in the middle of a tour. I hadn't been eating properly, I was getting very phobic about audiences, and I collapsed in pure fright.

By the early '70s I had gotten reasonable and I started to get in hundreds of groups that rehearsed and never played at all. I mean, the most important thing was to look good and have a great name.

I actually got really petrified by the thought of people seeing me.