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We used to sit around and listen to the radio and not hear anything like the stuff we like, so we decided to play it ourselves.

Our songs were not written to be listened to in headphones or on the radio. They were written to be played. All of the little infinite detail that went into the arrangements and giving ourselves lots of breathing room in terms of playing what we wanted to play and using up any ideas that we had - all of those were conceived to be performed.

When we first started playing in the early days, none of us really had any idea about writing our own songs yet. We were struggling how to learn our instruments and play songs to be able to perform for people.

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

I was clear that I wanted to do music and I wanted to write songs. But I wasn't clear about how I was going to make that happen. I wrote loads of songs but didn't want to show them to anyone.

My parents played the radio, but music was never an obsession or something that I thought I could call a career.

I think music has always been what I always wanted to do, but I didn't know how or when I was going to get discovered.

I just couldn't get anyone to sing my songs, so I had to sing my own tunes.

The ability to make music is a gift that you're born with; it's not something you can learn.

With the Stray Cats at least, we really took the music somewhere else. First, we wrote our own songs. That's a real weak point in modern classics if you do rockabilly or blues.