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For us there's U2 music, and then there's everything else.

The great music for so many artists - the Beatles, the Rolling Stones - was always at the moment when they were closest to pop. It would be easy for U2 to go off and have a concept album, but I want us to stay in the pop fray.

There's only one band that could ever even pretend to assume the mantle of what the Beatles did, who have been so pre-eminent and world-dominating that they could effect a paradigm shift in the culture, who have been willing to leverage their success into musical change, and that is U2 - regardless of what the result of that is.

I just don't get that new hot music. I don't know anything about all these groups like U2.

U2 is an original species... there are colours and feelings and emotional terrain that we occupy that is ours and ours alone.

Now U2's not my favorite band, but I do respect them, and in the same way I respect Bowie: They change without fear of change.

My favorite band was The Band, and nobody compares in my mind with The Band.

The band that changed my life was The Who. It's hard to pick just one album, but if I had to pick the one that really showed me how things could be done, it's 'The Who Sell Out.' They really went to town on that, doing something that no one had ever done before.