I'd love to see the world without liquor for a week.

In March 1977, I taped the single 'Career Opportunities' off Piccadilly Radio, which was the '70s equivalent of downloading, and then the album came out in April 1977.

I was really into punk when I was about 14.

The Roses should have made it as the biggest band since The Beatles, but we didn't.

I wasn't on stage to be worshipped or for people to look up to me. I was with the crowd.

We started out to finish groups like U2 - that was what it was all about.

You're never alone on the dole in Manchester.

The jails are full of kids from kids' homes. You're 16 years old, and you're out on the street. How you going to fend for yourself at 16 if you've not had an education? You're going to turn to crime.

People want to adulate people.

At primary school, I thought I was George Best. Then I got to secondary school, and it was more serious.

We should be growing carrots up the side of the Empire State Building or Big Ben.

Permacultures - where you use the immediate environment to grow food - should be mandatory.

People have to realise you don't help African children singing along to 60-year-old men playing their tunes from 40 years ago.

I'm only really good at making music. I wasn't convinced when I started out, but then I heard the first Stone Roses' LP.

Everything I've ever achieved, I've done on my terms.

Honestly, going solo is the second best thing that's ever happened to me after my kids.

You're never going to improve on a Michael Jackson song if you cover it.

I'd never been paid for the first Roses LP - it was 2002 before we received any royalties.

My wife is Mexican, and she's really influenced me: She's got an impressive collection of Mexican music.

Every time I do interviews, they ask me about the same things - poverty, war, and the power of the church.

I always loved Oasis because when they came out, they did express that they loved us, and they saw that we did it, and they thought they could do it, too.

One thing I've always loved and rated me dad for is that, because of him, I've never seen the Queen's Christmas speech.

By 1993, the Stone Roses had become this huge, beautiful cruise ship just floating about in the middle of nowhere with no captain.

We're the most important group in the world.

Even on songs we've got that are about a girl, there's always something there that's a call to insurrection.

We're against hypocrisy, lies, bigotry, show business, insincerity, phonies, and fakers.

I never wanted to be a pop singer, but I always watched pop programs and knew I could do better than the people I was seeing.

We believe that anyone can do anything, and everyone's a star. And that's evident from the shows we do. It just feels like a whole bunch of people in a room celebrating something - maybe just being alive.

With the Roses, I knew we were great; I felt that we would achieve something. On my own, I had no idea.

If I was in the gutter, and my kids lived on the kerb, I'd go and get a job in B&Q before I'd reform the Roses. I gave everything I had to the Stone Roses and ended up hitting a brick wall. I'm never going to give anyone a foothold on that wall again.

Since we were kids, we grow up believing that astronauts are heroes - that to go up in a rocket is a heroic thing. These guys are bigger than movie stars. To me, it's... all a well-dressed-up lie, basically. There's billions spent on rockets up there, and there's millions starving down here. It don't make sense to me.

I feel like the Roses were a great group, but I never wanted to try to do it again. I knew I couldn't get a band that would compare to the Roses, that would have an impact like the Roses.

I've got six solo albums. I've been round the world three times. I don't even think about the Roses.

I went into jail with absolutely no respect whatsoever for authority, and I came out with even less.

England's a small nation, and the pop music industry is built on fashion.

Internet is a good and convenient device for us for easy communication. It has lots of value.

The only advice I can give is to absorb as much as you can from as wide a spectrum as you can. If you're in a rock band and only soak up Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple kind of beginnings, then you're not going to have much leeway.

My grandad was an opera singer, my uncle a jazz musician; I was a boy soprano in the church choir. But the first performance with Deep Purple was something I'll never forget. All elements were working brilliantly.

I can't do one thing at a time. If I'm writing song lyrics, I've got to be doing the ironing or cooking or something while I'm working. If I just sit there and stare at the walls, I get nothing.

In Poland, the whole saying is, 'You've got one eye to Morocco and the other to the Caucasus.' That's the heart of the culture. In England, they say it less romantic: 'You've got a wandering eye.' The saying means my main stream in life must be Deep Purple. That's my main job. Then every now, and I can wander off and have one eye to Morocco.

We've been touring ever since we were able to afford to buy a van, and I don't think we'll ever stop until something falls off or is irreparable.

I was in a band called Episode Six with Roger Glover, which was more of a harmony band, really. At one gig, there were a few dodgy characters leaning up against the wall of the venue - and we ended up joining their band. Purple was the talk of every musician in the country - they had something new and very exciting.

Glenn Hughes is one of the most naturally talented musicians, but he's still copying Steve Wonder to this day, so I can't call him a bona fide member of Deep Purple.

My first contract was in 1965. There were six of us in this band - my band before Deep Purple - six in the band plus management, and the entire royalty rate was three-fourths of 1 percent.

I don't think anyone likes to be pushed around.

I've always been optimistic - I always expect the sun to come out.

I have heard that my Wikipedia entry is completely incorrect, but then again, so is everyone else's. I haven't bothered about that.

Our partying was governed by licensing hours. When the pub or club shut, that would be it.

Although he appeared in some awful movies, Elvis could also be pretty damn good as an actor.

I grew up moving from one council flat to another and finished up in a three-bedroom semi-detached on a council estate in Cranford, a suburb of Hounslow. This was in the days when there was still rationing, and we had to be thrifty.