As I said, when we needed to move over to rock'n'roll, Sam and Vernon couldn't quite make the shift. So that's when Larry took over on drums, and we needed a bass player.

Because Larry, by then, was a drummer, who would sort of get bored and tired, and rather stand up and blow kisses to people. So we needed the bass to sort of drive along.

I wasn't aware that Track Records were interested in the Bonzos.

It was just us lampooning our own peer group, saying, well hey, where did this stuff come from? And where does British guys get to be so good at it suddenly?

Ladies and gentleman, I've suffered for my music, now it's your turn.

I mean in recent years, I think you've only got to sell thirty or forty thousand to get a #1.

But I remember we sold nearly 18,000 records in one day.

But mostly, I wrote songs and Viv wrote songs.

But I mean, again, Zappa's far more musical than the Bonzos ever were.

In many ways, Viv and I were the only ones who were really songwriters.

In fact, Moon came on tour with us for a bit just before a big festival in Brighton, I think.

We weren't by any means like the Grateful Dead or something, who could just roll on and on and on.

So we used to look for funny songs, and learn them and play them. And we used to play them in pubs.

But we used to go to flea markets and things, and look for old 78 records that had silly song titles.

Eric Clapton always wanted to come out onstage with a stuffed parrot on his shoulder.

But Dennis was a really solid musician, and we really needed somebody who could play bass like him.

I think most musicians do like to have a laugh.

I see my role in the Bonzos as being the straight man, in many ways.

I suppose we all loved those kind of sci-fi movies where terrible things came out of swamps and came to Mars. And there's usually some poor girl. All the guys are trying to desperately handle levers and saying, go to something or other.

When we did Top of the Pops for the third time, we decided to do it as a television program here called Come Dancing, which is not as rude as it sounds.

I mean Gorilla was really our first sort of goes at songwriting.

We weren't going to play the show-biz game, and be obsequious.

I suppose Roger had the license to do anything that fitted the venue.

As I said, when we needed to move over to rock'n'roll, Sam and Vernon couldn't quite make the shift. So that's when Larry took over on drums, and we needed a bass player.

We then took a shortened version of what we'd been doing in the pubs, with the best gags and things like that, out to cabaret clubs and things in the north of England for six weeks. And we became a big success.

And Roger was crazy with his robots and everything.

Larry only ever wrote one song, and he wrote that with Tony Kaye, I think it was, from Yes.

Viv had this kind of stage presence where you couldn't ignore it. He walked onstage, he looked dangerous. You just didn't know what he was going to do.

I used to help Viv with the chords and melodies sometimes.

The first thing I read was of my character on the phone talking to Sydney's fiance. Though short, it was so beautifully written, and it made me laugh. I thought if I wanted to play a character, this would be it.

I remember when I first walked into Mayer's cavernous office. You had to walk 50 yards to get to him, and in that time he could really study everything about you.

I like the idea of being so passionate about everything I do and the fact that I might wake up tomorrow and say 'I want to be a chef,' and just pour myself into that.

'Spectrum' is in part a disco song. But we play it hard, and it's a real euphoric, wailing tune. It's kind of like a total house anthem, in a way, but it seems to be going down really well. We've got all the grunge kids going mad for disco house raves.

All you could do was to see them. We were backstage when the Beatles were on and you could just about hear a noise. It was just literally screaming.

Whenever the speech is corrupted so is the mind.

I respect very much my public and also the music I perform.

Since January 2002, when the United States began detaining at Guantanamo Bay enemy combatants captured in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other fronts in the war on terror, critics have complained of human rights abuses.

Of course, as consumers, we want cheap and good products; however, if these production processes are exceeding wastewater discharge standards and even causing heavy metal pollution, they will cause long-lasting damage to the ecological environment and public health.

If anything, one would think we learn from Brexit is we need a strong, stable banking system, not one to repeal the consumer bureau and repeal Dodd-Frank and give Wall Street what it wants. That would be the worst kind of response.

But, yeah, I'd love to do something else in someone else's movie.

I'm obviously very keen on the theater and I think it's inevitable that some of the orchestral and chamber pieces have got dramatic elements which might even suggest an unspecified dramatic plot of some kind or other, even though it's not in my mind at the time.

Some people, especially literary people, they think, 'I'll write this original script, and it will be full of ideas. I'll submit it, and they'll hire me for television.' That's not the case.

My mom cooked for us, and on the weekend, we always had Sunday dinner. My father liked to bake.

Everyone in my high school was a bit nerdy. We didn't even have a football team.

Throughout the day, I'll make a lot of green smoothies or salads, and then when I travel, I try my hardest to just keep up the regime. It's not always easy, but I do my best.

I think I grew up really fast; I grew up in this really fast-paced business, and I never understood what it meant to take a break or take time off or recover, and I paid for it.

As chief elections officer, it's my job to protect the integrity of the ballot.

I haven't really made up my mind concretely about having kids.

The very phrase 'Make America great again' implies some kind of reset to a time long since passed. A mission to restore America to a previous default setting where American economic superiority was without peer, factories and manufacturing plants were humming, and jobs were plentiful for anyone who wanted one.