By the time I was 19, punk had occurred. It had a completely different cultural dynamic to it which rejected everything and started again from the year zero.
The most important thing for anyone, I think, is to be engaged, whether you’re an artist or a journalist is to be engaged in the process at some level.
A virtue never tested is no virtue at all.
I enjoyed so much working with the guys from Wilco, and riffing off of them, and having someone come up to me with ideas, because normally in the studio it’s me who has to come up with all the ideas.
I was in a little punk band and we put out a few punk records that weren’t very political, at all.
I’m still batting away on my politics for the Labour Party. I’m much further to the left of them than I used to be, but that’s because they’ve moved, not me.
Money maketh man a tory, don’t fire that assumption at me, I like toast as much as anyone but not for breakfast, dinner and tea.
I’ve had songs written during the Falklands war, and during the first Gulf war I got letters from soldiers saying they were listening to these songs, like Island of no return.
It would shine a torch into the dirty little corner where the BNP defecate on our democracy, and that would be much more powerful than duffing them up in the street – which Im also in favour of.
Baptists burn more slowly.
You can be active with the activists or sleep in with the sleepers while you’re waiting for the Great Leap Forwards.
So, in some ways, the political songs tend to be a bit more like reportage, whereas the love songs tend to be like novels, you can pick them up off the shelf and go into them any time.
My theory is this; I’m not a political songwriter. I’m an honest songwriter.
All the great political music was made at the height of political confrontations.
I’m celebrating my love for you with a pint of beer and a new tattoo.
If you’ve got a blacklist, I want to be on it.
Capitalism is like fire: keep it under control and it will give you heat and light; leave it untended and it will consume everything in its path.
The challenge that faced the English in the seventeenth century was how to curb the absolute power of the monarch. In the twenty-first century, it is the markets that have taken on the mantle of absolutism, placing themselves above the jurisdiction of national governments. Holding the king to account was unprecedented and went against custom and tradition – holding the global markets to account is just as audacious and just as necessary.
Those of us who’d been through the cleansing fire of punk rock expected a little bit more, I think...
And although the world was just the same as it had always been as I travelled home on the Tube that evening, my view of it had been changed forever.
Our ability to have a respectful disagreement with our opponent s has been torn to shreds by market forces in a deliberate act of irresponsibility.