I grew up in a time when being a musician and learning to be a musician was actually very wonderful.

Every time you go in it's like starting over. You don't know how you did the other records. You're learning all over. It's some weird musician amnesia or maybe the road wipes it out.

I prefer to think of myself as a musician who is still learning and trying to do something every time out.

Instead of going to college I spent my time out on the road learning how to be a better musician.

The role of the musician is to go from concept to full execution. Put another way it's to go from understanding the content of something to really learning how to communicate it and make sure it's well-received and lives in somebody else.

They taught us because they wanted to pass the knowledge on and educate young musicians. It was not because they had to teach because they failed as musicians. There is a huge difference in the reasons why someone is teaching and what they can offer and what they cannot offer.

There was the best teachers from the Czech Philharmonic highly dedicated people some of the best musicians in the world passing on the knowledge about the country about the principles and about the music.

I'm quite ignorant about fashion and I'm colourblind so it's all a tad tricky. My only knowledge of that world comes through Christopher Bailey whom I first met in 2008 when I did a campaign for Burberry that featured musicians artists actors and sportsmen.

A jazz musician can improvise based on his knowledge of music. He understands how things go together. For a chef once you have that basis that's when cuisine is truly exciting.

Regardless of who originally made it popular any hit song becomes a challenge to the ingenuity and imagination of other musicians and performers.

For some reason I can't explain artist and musicians tend to look younger than our age. Being in music you need this youthful sense of discovery and wonder for what you're doing and keep your imagination open. That's a youthful way of looking at life and I think that reflects in how you age.

I want to be taken seriously as the type of musician that plays stuff like an electric rake. I mean how seriously do you take someone like Spike Jones? They take him pretty seriously - a really good musician who made a great contribution in terms of humor which is part of what I try to do too.

If someone decides to be a musician now it means because there is no hope of money at the end of it it means they really want to be a musician. And if someone is writing now there is no hope for money at the end of it.

I try to devote my afternoons to making music in my home studio but it's a lot more fun hanging out with musicians and friends and trying subtly to influence a band than making your own stuff.

You can't fake this music. You might be a great singer or a great musician but in the need that's got nothing to do with it. It's how you connect to the songs and to the history behind them.

If our history can challenge the next wave of musicians to keep moving and changing to keep spiritually hungry and horny that's what it's all about.

As musicians and artists it's important we have an environment - and I guess when I say environment I really mean the industry that really nurtures these gifts. Oftentimes the machine can overlook the need to take care of the people who produce the sounds that have a lot to do with the health and well-being of society.

Musicians are probably the most uncomfortable people in themselves in the world. Happiness I think only exists when you're a child and once you go past 11 unfortunately it's gone.

The pop musicians often leave meaning in the dust and substitute it for cartoons. The deeper artists - the grunge artists in the world and the emoticon people - tend to leave all of the happiness out of life like it just doesn't exist.

It was physically difficult adjusting to wheelchair life but I remember a great relief and happiness that I was finally getting somewhere finding musicians to work with that were sympathetic.

I always seem to have a vague feeling that he is a Satan among musicians a fallen angel in the darkness who is perpetually seeking to fight his way back to happiness.

And as I grew older I then auditioned for the Royal Academy of Music in London and they said well no we won't accept you because we haven't a clue - you know - of the future of a so-called 'deaf' musician. And I just couldn't quite accept that.

I really wanted to just be a musician. I didn't want to be anything else but I was funny and all that.

It's funny when bands or younger musicians ask me: 'So what does it take to make it?' Well first explain to me what you mean by 'making it': Do you want to be a rock star or do you want music to be your livelihood?