"...at one stage we were the biggest band in Iceland."
Fame at least for the Human League's Ian Burden

"How do you mike up a
 pygmy? With a small 
microphone, I guess."

African mysteries unravelled 
by Stewart Copeland

"There is only one way to do a Meat Loaf song and that is my way. That is the best way."
Meat Loaf on the delights of compromise

"Last year I did see myself moving away from the singles market. Then I realised I had to buy a fridge."
Nick Heyward talks about artistic inspiration

"The thing about the music is that it just goes on and on and on, so it's a matter of endurance and concentration to play it."
Philip Glass

"I suppose people aren't immediately going to rush out and sell their Marshall stack to buy a sax." C-Cat Trance's Nigel Kingston-Stone

"When we write songs, we record various ideas onto a ghetto-blaster, sit down and listen, have a drink, do it again, have another drink, do it again, have another drink, do it again, have another drink, do it again, have another drink, then we can't get up any more!"
Jaz from Killing Joke on the creative process.

"Trying to get a bit of sea is unbelievable. We got in sounds effects albums but they're awful - so noisy, or the wrong kind of sea..." Kate Bush has watery mix problems

"Well, that's fucking stupid, isn't it? Bloody doing the interview without bloody hearing the bloody album. Typical!"
Tears For Fears' Roland Orzabal not chuffed over Adrian Deevoy's technique

"It was smokin'... we were thumpin', man... these three black cats from Queens playing some serious Rock 'n' Roll behind David Bowie. It was hip. Bowie was cool. He just let us go out there and burn..."
"... when you play with those cats you gotta be on the money. That only motivates me to go out and play my ass off every time I see those other smokin' cats."
Tony Thompson's dictionary of Jive

"... rather than getting ambitious and writing a bridge section most people just let the guitarist wank off for a while."
REM's Peter Buck takes the avant-garde approach to soloing

"I use all the cliches, any old fucking cliches, put 'em in there... no, on the last album I wanted to get 'love' and 'baby' in as many times as I could."
Neil Arthur from Blancmange on lyrics

"... this noise like a strangled elephant. That's me wrestling with a Roland guitar synth." John Martyn on technology

"...the typical Imagination sound where Lee is on the limit of his falsetto, with pliers in his right-hand pocket, tears streaming from his eyes..."
Ashley Ingram on the Funk band's secret

"I sometimes listen to early Bob Dylan. But not so much that I'd like to join Lloyd Cole and the Commotions."
Prefab Sprout's Martin MacAloon turns critic

"Now I see myself sitting inside the music more than sitting inside the guitar," Stanley Jordan, Jazz guitar virtuoso and man with strange taste in seating

"Then there's the Emulator I. Every time it packs up we hit on the right leg with a hammer."
New Order microchip wizard Peter Hook

"I like Drawmer Dual Expander/Compression units because you can always key something and gate it... and if it doesn't work you can always gate the gate on these things."
Dave Stewart opens the gate debate

"... as a musician he's got about as good a sense of rhythm as a limp lettuce."
producer Derek Bramble on David Bowie

"I do not like to be obvious, like how some will start a song with 'one, two, three four!' I start a song any way I like. Sometimes I might tell the drummer something like this... (stares straight ahead then blinks four times)."
King Sunny Ade

"As a musician I'm like what they usually tell the guy in the orchestra who's new; 'Play quiet and look interesting'..."
Tom Waits elaborates on his modest approach to bandleading.

"Thinking of you is probably my favourite song of all time."
The ever-modest Terry Hall

"...out of the blue came this call: 'David Bowie needs you in Montreal in two weeks'. I said 'Sheee-it'."
Bassist Carmine Rojas

"I just found Eric Burdon an aggravating son of a bitch. By and large, Eric was just a pain in the neck."
Chas Chandler on the joys of the Animals reunion

"I just hit them until they sound good"
Phil Collins on his drum sound

Tom: "When we first finished the first album the three of us thought 'How The Hell are we going to perform this?'...
(Alannah): "and we shit ourselves."
The Thompson Twins at their most charming

"It's alright to 'ave a good image, but you can't polish a turd, can you?"
Clint from Beltane Fire minces his words

"When I did Walk On The Wild Side I didn't even know who Lou Reed was... I got £9 for that solo."

"Years after that, I did a TV show with Wayne Sleep and he did it, and I played the solo. The producer stopped me and said 'can you make it a bit more like the guy on the record?'"
Saxman Ronnie Ross rips off his own solo

"We nick stuff all the time... but I'm not telling you where from!"
Lawsuits a-go-go from Glen Gregory of Heaven 17

"I used to play piano on Play School. Big Ted had a bit of an ego problem and Katoo was totally out of control. He used to bite the presenters actually on the show so they'd be trying to hide this bleeding hand and smile while they dripped blood all over the arched window." Behind the scenes of the programme that scarred a generation with the Art Of Noise's Anne Dudley

"We sat there together with my hand on his knee, listening..."
Jimmy Page and Robert Plant get together

"Robert's voice goes across the top of the mix and takes the edge off... you know, like when you get wired and take a Valium."
Clean-living preppie Andy Taylor talks about Robert Palmer, the Power Station and pills

"Jem had joined up with Shane and Spider the tin-whistle player and they got to play a gig at the Cabaret Futura where they got up and sang rebel songs. They got pelted off with chips so they thought they'd like to take the idea further..."
Jimmy Fearnley explains the genesis of The Pogues

"I did have a Gibson but Kito, our percussionist, took it to Brazil where he was going to sell it for me... unfortunately he never came back. He left me his old acoustic guitar with a hole in the back."
Matt Bianco man Mark Reilly

"I like to rub myself in coconut oil. Well, I say rub myself — I like to have it rubbed in by three nubile nymphettes. Black, of course. Then I boil up some custard and put my fingers in the custard and smear it all over my head."
The things songwriters like Hugh Cornwell have to go through...

"Stoker... was working with techno-Pop artist Tin Tin, but the prospects of teaming up with Wakeling and Ranking Roger proved more attractive."
General Public's drummer may have had the odd second thought when Stephen Tin Tin' Duffy hit the big time

"We decided to experiment and that's when Trevor Rabin came to my studio and jammed with us. All of us played really badly; it was the worst thing you have ever heard!"
Yes's Chris Squire blows the gaff on Progressive Rock technique

"It was a vortex; it just kept going round and round the same way, and I like to feel that specifically my poetry is more organic than that.
A head trip from Gil Scott-Heron

"That poor thing from The Smiths, Morissey, came and sat there fidgeting and licking his lips and I could hardly get a squeak out of him. I know he's got a very nice voice but he just wouldn't sing"
Tona de Brett

"It makes you more thorough in your approach to work if you know darn well that the nett result of you not doing something is having Townshend lob a guitar at you."
Who roadie Roger Searle on job satisfaction

"We prefer large venues. You can get more people in."
Foreigner's bassist Rick Wills philosophises

"I just shave about twice a week. It's not because of any macho-man thing, I just have really sensitive skin. If I shave every day I always cut myself to pieces..."
Wild Man Of Rock Nils Lofgren

"What the fuck are you talking about? A toilet? Do you mean my toilet bowl fetish? Well that's another magazine really..."
Paul Weller bowled over by Deevoy's questioning

"It came to the crunch in It Must Be Love when he got the old bee's outfit out..."
Madness' Woody on Dave Robinson's video-making technique