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Obviously the people that I admired, like the Beatles, were really into rock'n'roll, but it was already a little past rock'n'roll when I started listening and making my own choices about music.

The music we made then was so amateurish, compared to the rest of mainstream pop or rock and roll. But what differentiated us from what everybody else was doing in the business was the fact that you could tell that these people came from different reference areas.

I was born at the beginning of rock and roll. I got to experience the entire evolution of popular rock and roll music even before it started.

When I talk about rock n' roll, to me, that goes back to the beginning of the 1950s. Blue suede shoes and sideburns, man. Pink and black coloured clothes. Turn your collar up, comb your hair in ducktails. And the music was cool. It was a whole culture then - a different world.

I was inspired by the classic rock radio of the Seventies. They separated Chuck Berry and the Beatles from the Led Zeppelins and Bostons and Peter Framptons of the time. In many ways, classic rock became bigger than mainstream rock.

The Beatles changed music forever. They took rock n' roll from a medium that was about cars and girls and gave it context, interesting chord changes and true musicianship.

I think a lot of people came into rock n' roll to try to change the world. I came into rock n' roll to make music.

I think between The Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and innumerable acts after that... rock music became a huge economic force.

I'm a hybrid-genre person, which a lot of people find confusing. I grew up listening to American country music and rock n' roll made between 1955 and 1959. The Everly Brothers and Chuck Berry were my first musical loves and are still what I am most moved by. Roy Orbison came a little bit later.

The moment artists can just do what they love to do then music will go right back to where it used to be. I mean back in the '60s and '70s and '80s, that's what it was.