Interview for The Jonathan Ross Show

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We used to do covers all the time as you say and most of our act was covers… We had to come up with a trick as to defeat so John and I started writing and that’s how we started writing. There was no great muse, it was just to beat these people who knew our act.

They are fond memories because then The Beatles happened and it all got to be a phenomenon and everything but before that it wasn’t, it was just two guys wandering along trying to work it out.

We got to a point where we got really crappy over business. To me that rubbed off on me and for years I thought ‘oh me and John, bitter rivals’ and all this stuff. I was very lucky before he got killed that we were mates and we were ringing each other and we were talking… He used to make bread and we’d talk about ‘what’s your recipe man?’ so it got very normal again but it was important for me – it still is – to see photographs of us writing lyrics and things and smiling at each other… That’s what it really was. The story about the break up, it’s true but it’s not the main bit, the main bit was the affection.

There was a big business thing and everything got very sour and then that kind of just got boring and I would just ring John and eventually it just got friendly again. So now he had a baby and I was bringing up babies so we could talk about that. You could talk about normal stuff so it got very nice and I said, to this day, I’m so glad because it would have been the worst thing in the world to have this great relationship that then soured and he gets killed, so there was some solace in the fact that we got back together. We were good friends.

I was at home and I got a phone call. It was early in the morning, I was in the country and I just got a phone call and it was like [moves his body back in shock] – I think it was like that for everyone. It was just horrific, you couldn’t take it in and I couldn’t take it in and I just for days couldn’t think that he was gone… It was just a huge shock, then I had to tell Linda and the kids and it was very difficult… It was very difficult for everyone, that was like a really big shock I think in most people’s lives. A bit like Kennedy, there were certain moments like that. For me it was just so sad that I wasn’t going to see him again and we weren’t going to hang out and for me the biggest thing was that the guy who has took his life… The phrase kept coming in my head ‘The jerk of all jerks’. It was just like ‘this is just a jerk, this is not even a guy politically motivated, it’s just some total random thing.

About abbey road:

For me it is a nostalgia trip. I remember the very first day we walked in as four twenty-something boys… Whenever I go back in there, all the memories come flooding back, just all these memories from every little corner.

About abbey road crossing

What do you think I feel like when I’m stopped there? I pull the visor down… I’ve always wanted to recreate that picture…. This Halloween, we’d been to a Halloween party and I had this amazing werewolf mask. I’m going home and I’ve still got this big mask on and we go to the crossing and I’m like ‘we’ve got to do it’ and it was 11 at night so I stop and Nancy my wife gets her phone and we’re holding up the traffic, but I’m there