If there were no Carl Perkins, there would be no Beatles.
Alas, it looks like those unsubstantiated rumours about me are about to come true after all this time...
I doubt very much if The Beatles would have happened if it was not for Elvis.
I don’t know anything about the Appalachian mountains or cowboys and Indians or anything. I just made it up.
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds actually wasn’t meant to say LSD It was a drawing that John’s son brought home from school Lucy was a kid in his school.
All the lonely people, where do they all come from?
My brother’s researched our early family history. He found a letter from a fella who said he used to be in love with my mum.
If anyone had told me in the ’60s that 20 years later we’d still be talking about whether pot was worse than this or that, I’d have said, Oh, come off it, boys.
I’m trying to do it honestly and genuinely; if some of it’s not working to your taste, what can I say?
I’m not into, Hey, what’s your sign? or any of that. But I don’t know how I got here, and I don’t know how I write songs. I don’t know why I breathe.
I would quite like to have been a 1920s writer.
I would have liked the Beatles never to have broken up. I wanted to get us back on the road doing small places, then move up to our previous form and then go and play. Just make music, and whatever else there was would be secondary.
I was impossible. I don’t know how anyone could have lived with me. For the first time in my life, I was on the scrap heap, an unemployed worker.
I think the idea of getting out of a traffic jam and getting out of work each week and going and doing all this stuff would be really exhausting.
I think a domestic situation can change you and your attitudes. I suppose if you did get a bit content, then you might not write savage lyrics.
I lost my voice. I’d never had to cancel a show before and I had to walk around with a pad and a pen, writing things down.
It was a period when they used to read into our lyrics a lot, used to think there was more in them than there was.
It’s as serious as anyone ever gets, you know. It’s just words. It’s just good poetry.
My arrest was on every bloody TV set. The other prisoners all knew who I was and asked me to sing.
Lyricists play with words.