David Bowie

Pixies and Sonic Youth were so important to the eighties.

Everything I read about hitting a midlife crisis was true. I had such a struggle letting go of youthful things and learning how to exist and have enthusiasm while settling into the comfort of an older age.

What I have is a malevolent curiosity. That's what drives my need to write and what probably leads me to look at things a little askew. I do tend to take a different perspective from most people.

I'm in awe of the universe, but I don't necessarily believe there's an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance.

I'm in awe of the universe, but I don't necessarily believe there's an intelligence or agent behind it. I do have a passion for the visual in religious rituals, though, even though they may be completely empty and bereft of substance. The incense is powerful and provocative, whether Buddhist or Catholic.

When I was 18, I thought that, to be a romantic, you couldn't live past 30.

I'm well past the age where I'm acceptable. You get to a certain age and you are forbidden access. You're not going to get the kind of coverage that you would like in music magazines, you're not going to get played on radio and you're not going to get played on television. I have to survive on word of mouth.

My son's full real name is Duncan Zowie Haywood. As a toddler, he was called by his second name Zowie. But it was such an identifiable name during the Seventies that if I called him loudly in public places, everyone would turn to stare, so I started calling him Joey to take the pressure off.

I don't like to read things that people write about me. I'd rather read what kids have to say about me because it's not their profession to do that.

I would drive to gigs in my tiny little Fiat. I would shoot up and down the M1 to play at various places.

Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.

Glam really did plant seeds for a new identity. I think a lot of kids needed that - that sense of reinvention. Kids learned that however crazy you may think it is, there is a place for what you want to do and who you want to be.