As far as the Animals breaking up – it was my fault. I wanted out. We took it to the max, as far as we could take it. Our reunion tour in 1983 went pretty good until we left America. Then we pushed it too hard and it fell apart.
OK, I’ve had a life of sort of success, some people know who I am but a lot of people don’t. I feel the need to change that still.
I’m really still a child of the Forties. I still think about it a lot, about the repercussions of armed conflict. Until 1953 we had rationing. We couldn’t buy meat, we couldn’t buy pleasurable goods like cigarettes and sweets. I didn’t starve – my family were lucky – but I knew what it was like standing in line waiting for foodstuffs.
Blues was made for the recessed.
Eventually I would like to reach the stage where I don’t have to write about love and kisses and all that stuff. I wish I could write about really ultimate things. That’s where I think all of us want to go, really. All the groups seem to be heading towards a kind of pop music that deals with ultimate things.
I’ve got a great dislike of reunions. It’s a little like trying to go back and relive the best parts of your life, but you can’t do it. Nothing is ever the same.
The basis of everything that I plugged into when I was younger was blues, and it always stayed with me.
Have you seen ‘American Idol’ lately? I’m sure that some kids somewhere at this moment are thrashing themselves silly over what they call ‘Rock n’ Roll.
I was in college, and very disappointed. I majored in commercial art and interior design for three or four years. At that time, it seemed the thing I really wanted to do, production design, just wasn’t available in the U.K., so I turned to music.
I don’t think Jimi committed suicide in the conventional way. He just decided to exit when he wanted to.
If you think that UFOs will come and save you, don’t be fooled. The Nazis invented UFOs.
I have a life beyond performance. I love it, and it probably is the better part of my life, but I do have another life.
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