My son is in a band, and he's a singer, and his vocals... they're screaming-growling stuff... and he's got a pretty reasonable voice. Yet he practices really hard to get the screaming-growling thing without losing that voice every five minutes. So I'm, like, 'Hats off to you.'

My aim as a frontman is always to try and shrink the venue, if you can, to turn that football stadium into the world's smallest club. At least you have to try.

Engineering stimulates the mind.

I enjoy making solo albums because over the years it's evolved into more of a genuine personal expression of story-telling and day dreams, and I work in a way that has more control.

One of my earliest ventures was when I was nine years old. I realized there was a shortage of pencils at school, so I started Rent-a-Pencil. But I made a fundamental mistake. Everybody stole my pencils.