"I don't think I have enough German blood in me to get into the royal family." — Richard Ashcroft

If you start shaping everything you do trying to be in step with whatever is going on in the world, you're often out of step by the time people hear it. It's a bit like fashion.

I lost a good friend a few years ago, and it happened quite suddenly. Any event like that leaves you with questions. Would a phone call have made a difference? Did the person know that you were there for them?

I'm totally up for experimental music. I'm up for music that they don't play on the radio, and I take in all of it. But my thing, the thing that comes most natural to me, is making the stuff that has a melody; it has a soul to it, yet it's head music.

We'd lie on the floor, turn the lights out, put two speakers on either side of our ears, and try to blow our minds with music. I know that I want to make a record that does that yet a record that, if it was played on the radio at twelve in the afternoon, the guy making the wall - the guy cleaning the motorway - he's got a melody to hang on.