I was jailed for using words that I still dispute. Anyone who's ever met me will tell you that I'm not a violent person.
— Ian Brown
You're never alone on the dole in Manchester.
We started out to finish groups like U2 - that was what it was all about.
I was really into punk when I was about 14.
People in Russia learned English off the Beatles. People in Japan learned English off the Stone Roses. Noel Gallagher says music can't change the world, but the Roses made him want to start a group, so it changed his world.
Some of the kids who discovered me from my 'F.E.A.R.' record or one of the U.N.K.L.E. tunes have said, 'I don't even like the Roses; I love your solo stuff.' I buzz off that.
They've had a hard life, the Oasis brothers. They've done really well to be semi-normal. It's always sad when your dirty linen is brought out in public.
My sister bought me the Koran in 1990. I always thought the stories in it were magical.
I used to be one of those kids who couldn't keep my mouth shut.
The Beatles were great; we know that. But we were trying to do a new thing. Why do we need to recreate the Sixties?
Putting another human being above yourself isn't healthy. I think it's capitalistic.
I love karaoke - I usually do Blondie's 'Heart Of Glass,' or 'Try A Little Tenderness.'
I don't actually personally get off on guitar music.
I thought it would be more interesting to make a musical autobiography than an actual autobiography.
When the ravens leave the Tower, England shall fall, they say. We want to be there shooting the ravens.
Everybody is a star. It's true. And if you've got a light, don't let it go out. 'Cos some people sink under.
Belief outweighs talent. Self-belief's got me everything, self-belief.
People want to adulate people.
I spent the summer of '88 indoors, writing 'Shoot You Down,' 'Bye Bye Badman,' and 'Don't Stop.'
I wasn't on stage to be worshipped or for people to look up to me. I was with the crowd.
In March 1977, I taped the single 'Career Opportunities' off Piccadilly Radio, which was the '70s equivalent of downloading, and then the album came out in April 1977.
I'd love to see the world without liquor for a week.
I was skint, and I had to move back to my mum and dad's house, back into the room I shared with my brother when I was a kid. I kept getting people on the streets telling me that they loved me; it didn't mean anything to me because I was still borrowing tenners off my pensioner father to go and get some chicken.
I see The Stone Roses in '89 as Technicolor: we were all about joy and possibilities of life.
I started managing myself in October 2004, and since then, it's gone up and up.
My biggest fault is that I give people too much credit. Then they let you down. I'm 99.9 per cent perfect - that's how I look at myself and, therefore, everybody else too.
When you live in Manchester and it's raining every day, you've got to imagine the sun sometimes. When you're brought up in concrete, you aim for the green leaves. And when you get to the green leaves, you yearn again for concrete.
I'd like to write songs for other people, see things from a different perspective. I'd like to watch things from the dugout instead of the pitch.
It's a horrible name, Coldplay. It doesn't conjure up any positive thoughts.
I'm solo, and I love being solo. I believe I went through the Roses so I could become a solo music-maker. That's what I believe.
I am gentle. I think nearly everyone who makes music is sensitive - I don't care how hard they pretend they are.
We're all anti-royalist, anti-patriarch. Cos it's 1989. Time to get real.
Hell is being stuck in a lift with Elton John and the Queen Mother.
I've never chatted up a girl in me life. I've always let girls come to me. I've never approached a girl to chat her up.
The jails are full of kids from kids' homes. You're 16 years old, and you're out on the street. How you going to fend for yourself at 16 if you've not had an education? You're going to turn to crime.
Even me mum can't tell me what to do.
The Roses should have made it as the biggest band since The Beatles, but we didn't.
I can't think of anyone who's reformed for art's sake. That's why the Roses will never reform.
Getting a grey beard's not cool.
You'll never find a Manchester band slagging off another Manchester band, but within each Manchester band, people will rip each other apart: Mondays, Smiths, New Order, Roses, Oasis.
I've always said prayers.
Oasis are okay, but they're like The Sun: base.
I love people, me, I believe in people. I love people too much.
Stardom's transitory. Nothing really changes except people's attitudes.
I went to a friend's 40th in Manchester, and there was a karaoke machine, and no one was having a go. My mate said, 'No one's singing because you're in the room.' I said, 'Who am I, Frank Sinatra?' They made me sing flipping 'My Star' to a backing track that sounded like '80s Roxy Music. It was pretty embarrassing, but I did it.
I like a lot of that Chicago stuff, house music.
Just because I'm a successful singer who's loved and has been loved for years doesn't mean I'm sitting behind electric gates in my own fantasy land.
When The Stone Roses first came out, the early reviews called me 'simian.' I had to look that up at the time.
I feel like the Ryan Giggs of music.
People tend to settle for the fiver rather than going for the pot of gold.
