- 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.
- When I first got into music I was really into the Pet Shop Boys for some reason, and so I got interested in the Fairlight, and the DX7, and the whole late eighties thing. I really got into MIDI. I always had half an eye on digital things. But I was living at home and I got a QY10 when they first came out. I thought that was one of the most amazing things I'd ever heard. I programmed a whole bunch of bass lines and backing tracks for some sort imaginary concert I was going to play - even though I wasn't even in a band. In fact I was about 12. Although I've always been into that side of it I'm certainly not an expert. The same applies to analog stuff. If you put me in front of a big modular synth I wouldn't know where to start. But I do like a good simple old synth where you can change the sound with a few knobs and where you can hear the sound reacting to what you're doing. I'm just a songwriter; someone who likes making music rather than being a real tech head. So as long I can get what I want out of a synth, be it an old analog one or a modern digital one, then I'm happy, and I've just about got enough knowledge to do that.
- [2004] We all like a beer and we are certainly not advocates of temperance, but why would you put yourself through the hell of addiction just to be rock'n'roll?
- [on Noel Gallagher's comment that "Traditionally speaking, the three biggest twats in any band are the singer, the keyboardist and the drummer. I don't need to say anything else."] We don't really care. I think he's a c**t to be honest. He was in a band that was brilliant in the '90s and now they're just not important anymore.
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