Quotes

I'm not sure I believe in any life after death. Life is an opportunity as well as a test, but ultimately it's all just preparing us for the big mystery of death. That's pretty scary stuff for people like me who can't face the idea of retirement sitting in an armchair watching repeats of Casualty (1986) until we finally pop off.

I'm not a Christian. I don't 'do' Jesus. But Christianity, like most of the world's great religions, is a good, practical moral code for living. However, there are some very nasty messages in the Bible. That Moses guy - dangerous freak!

[on receiving the MBE] My only problem was that I was very much opposed to some of the policies of Tony Blair during his regime, and my award was decided under a Blair government. I came very close to saying I couldn't accept it. I'd like to think that it was awarded for my efforts in having musicians' copyright recognised, rather than for making rather too much money out of playing the flute for many years.

I started off with the guitar, but I decided to give it up when I heard Eric Clapton. It's the way people are put off playing tennis when they watch Roger Federer. I found the flute gave me something interesting melodically.

I've never been a tax exile. We secured Swiss residency, but decided that such a radical change of life just for saving money was ... well, not cricket. I am, in principle, in favour of a relatively high level of tax for the highest earners. If you're making £20 million a year and you pay 80 per cent tax, life's not come to an end.

I had a firm resolve to walk away from Jethro Tull and playing live music. It was a feeling of betrayal - these people buy your record and then come to a concert and whistle and hoot and screech and generally do everything possible to stop you hearing what you're playing! A baying crowd just looking to get their jollies out of volume and repetitive rhythm - it all felt quite vulgar.

When you look at the bigger picture, punk was a few months of arch, fashionable, camp, theatrical, overtly money-making and attention-seeking glory, spawned by Malcolm McLaren. Punk was really at its height at the time of the MC5 in 1969. They were more important than anything that came out of the UK in '76. Punk was supposed to be about gutsy honesty. Most of it was young poseurs pretending to be angry because it was the thing to do.

Even with records like Forever Changes, Sgt Pepper and Are You Experienced, it was a little later before the enormity of how good some of that music was really sank in. The year of '67 turned out to have raised the stakes. It got away from the three-chord trick. Rock music developed sophistication. Great pieces like Cream's 'Tales of Brave Ulysses' didn't have much to do with black America any more. It's hard to imagine anything that occurred in the '70s, '80s, '90s or now that doesn't owe something to what happened then.

The most abiding memory of that summer of '67 is the Englishness of it. It was a coming of age of British music, where we were no longer in debt to American blues.

[when asked what nationality he considers himself] I am a Brit. I'm a Brit! I'm a product of the Union.