Peter Gabriel

I've talked to a lot of artists - painters, writers, musicians - many of whom have had great ideas on trains. The only explanation I have is all that stuff is coming at you while you're relaxed, so somehow it kicks you into hyperspace in terms of brain function.

I'm often guilty of overcooking and too much arrangement and throwing too much at it. But I think as I get older, I'm learning better when to be empty and when to be full.

Snowden's revelations shocked the world and made it very clear why we need to have some way to look over those who look over us. With increasing terrorist attacks, security is critical, but not without any accountability or oversight.

I think another thing is that we don't really want exclusivity. We accept that it is in the artist's interest to be on sale in every place where they sell music.

I really wanted the first record to be different from what I'd done with Genesis, so we were trying to do things in different styles.

I think it is the weak and the young and the minorities that you need to look after to get a healthy creative environment - to get a lot of choices, a lot of different styles of music, a lot experimental stuff that everyone else feeds off.

As you get older, some top notes drop off and bottom notes appear, which I quite like. You listen to Leonard Cohen or Johnny Cash, and you see the advantage of the lower end.

I didn't leave the band to go solo so much as to stop feeling like a production item.

Art suggests stuff that is traded like money, that is kept in galleries and that belongs to the elite, whereas experience is something that everybody has in the course of living.

The industry does have some influence on who gets other awards. With the Mercury Prize, they don't. Jon comes from the business, but his heart is still very much in the music. Currently, we have about 12 major names that have said they want to be a part of MUDDA.

When I left Genesis, I just wanted to be out of the music business. I felt like I was just in the machinery. We knew what we were going to be doing in 18 months or two years ahead. I just did not enjoy that.

The American record company Geffen got so fed up with me that they said they weren't going to release my fourth record unless I gave it some title. So it was called 'Security' in America, and it had no title everywhere else in the world.