Biography

I remember having piano lessons when I was very young, and I never practised. It was just boring, it was all classical music, and I didn't like it. I always had to do exams, you know these theory exams, where they make you sing, god it was so humiliating! Anyway, so eventually because I never practised, my parents made me give up and said they don't want to pay for the lessons anymore but of course, being a typical kind of difficult teenager as soon as I stopped having lessons I had actually wanted to play the piano. So I started teaching myself.

I see it as my mission to make the piano as much of an icon as the guitar.

Critics talk an unbelievable amount of shit. But then so do bands.

We didn't take time to sit back and enjoy our success with Hopes and Fears; we lost sight of the need to keep working on our relationship. There was a lot of tension, confusion and just a frustration with ourselves, and instead of taking time off and coming back refreshed, we took all that pent-up, dark energy into the studio with us. The atmosphere was pretty heavy, we argued a lot about the music and, of course, the songs were so intense - all of which added to the vibe.

For me, the seminal '80s moment was hearing the Pet Shop Boys's "Always On My Mind". At that time, pop music was a wasteland - Kylie (Kylie Minogue) and Stock, Aitken and Waterman.