When I was in employment as a regular line pilot, I used to take unpaid leave to go on tour with Iron Maiden. I got lucky – they let me off.
I’ve been to the Reading festival twice before-as a punter, though I stayed backstage in the hospitality tent!
Don’t ask me to put up a shelf, but I love engineering.
With the Internet, bands can come and go every five minutes and the music looks disposable.
A few of these interviews have gone slightly awry, because every now and again there has been the odd conflict of interest between interviews because of the Iron Maiden record, and I am a bit long-winded.
In my teenage years I was put off the idea of a career in flying, because I’d convinced myself that you had to be a boffin with degrees in maths and physics, which were my weakest subjects.
My aim as a frontman is always to try and shrink the venue, if you can, to turn that football stadium into the world’s smallest club. At least you have to try.
If it all just happens like this for the rest of my life, it’s going to be one endless Groundhog Day. I determined that I was not prepared to submit to this regime, so I thought I had to do something about it.
I do like Marylin Manson, actually. I think, he’s very talented and he did make some great music.
Tyranny of freedom is do what you like. There’s a world gone crazy, cause it can’t say no.
South Wales is a hub of aviation.
Major labels blow all their money massively and blame it on the band.
I’m not going to do any more solo touring.
I find that fencing and training give me more stamina and help me deal with the craziness of being on the road so much.
I enjoy making solo albums because over the years it’s evolved into more of a genuine personal expression of story-telling and day dreams, and I work in a way that has more control.
Nothing in childhood is ever wasted.
Bullying happens because weak people need to prop up their ego by beating up or humiliating others.
If you dream something, it might happen. If you never dream it, it will never happen.
I had memorised Deep Purple’s Made in Japan note for note. Every drumbeat, every thud of Ian Paice’s bass-drum beater, I had tried to replicate. Ditto the first Black Sabbath album, Aqualung by Jethro Tull, plus my eccentric collection of Van der Graaf Generator albums and treasured copy of Wild Turkey’s first offering.
Rock stars, of course, have long had the capacity to act like babies, but have not had the sense to sing like them.
In later years I discovered the Japanese expression often used in schools to describe an individual who was overly individualistic: ‘The nail that stands up is always hammered down.