Biography

You better wake up and smell the roses before they're on your coffin lid!

I wanted to be in the biggest band in the world. And we were a couple of times. People in Britain don't realise. We don't get the credit we deserve in Britain. It's nice to walk down Oxford Street without being recognised but then again when music magazines write about us they take the piss because we're not as cool as Johnny Marr, who isn't as successful as us by a million miles. Jools Holland won't have us on his show because we're not cool enough. Rock's ploughed its own furrow for 30 years but still music magazines don't give rock its due and still rave on about Nick Drake. How many more front covers do Paul McCartney and Morrissey (Morrissey) need? Our album will sell more than Morrissey's so why don't we get the same kind of respect? There are more people than Bono and Michael Stipe to put on the cover of a magazine. Whether it's Simon Le Bon, Gary Kemp, Bruce Dickinson or me, there are more musicians out there. It's not just Lennon (John Lennon) and Jim Morrison. Bands who have sold shit-loads of records, whether it be us or Depeche Mode, are becoming footnotes.

We were only getting $50 a week when we started touring so I didn't want to get into debt paying for TVs. There are lots of great rock bands who have never thrown a TV through a window. It's not a prerequisite. I've always been more into the music than the groupies, drugs or smashing up hotel rooms.

I was 17 when punk happened but I was still buying Queen and Thin Lizzy. We liked punk but didn't want to be in a punk band. The first song we learned was Suffragette City. The good thing was that punk got rid of the 15 minute guitar solo.

After you have a hit like Hysteria and you're signed to the corporate machine it becomes an albatross around your neck. As much as our music is anthemic rock'n'roll it's a business at the end of the day. It's stressful and gets harder each time you make a record.