Quotes from Shakin' Stevens

To write a song is one thing, to get it to No.1 is another and to have a respected artist cover it is incredible. It's great to know my songs will be around for a long time.

I couldn't go on an '80s package show or anything like that. I have a lot more to give. If you go down that road completely I think you'll stay with a certain type of audience. Again I'm not knocking it. People go for the fun of the hits, it's what they've grown up with.

I still love being on the road. I've been doing it since I left school. It's in my blood, it's in my bones.

My older brothers would scour the railway tracks for lumps of fallen coal to keep us warm and we'd sleep, top to tail, three to a bed. So we were seriously poor in every way except for one. We were rich in love.

Call me Shaky, not Michael. I've been Shaky for so long it would be like calling Muddy Waters McKinley, wouldn't it?

As for Glastonbury, it's the biggest festival there is in Britain, and I'm very pleased to be asked to do it.

My fans go right across the board. They come to my concerts in family groups.

My grandfather, born in 1865, was a copper miner from the age of 10. The air down the mines was poisoned with arsenic, and working conditions were horrific. They only had candles for light, so they worked in a pitch-black environment.

DJs used to mickey-take, have a real poke at Shakin' Stevens.

I'm sure I'm not the only artist to flinch remembering some of the tacky merchandise sold at gigs - flags, pillowcases - which I'd only seen for the first time when they were already on sale in the foyer.

My health had always been pretty good.

When I was growing up, there were 13 children - it was different times then.

War affects people in different ways.

I knew about my grandmother's husband who died in the Albion coal disaster. But I didn't know a brother died in the same disaster because of the health and safety, which was terrible.

I never dressed like a teddy boy, and I don't like shaving but you've got to do it.

You used to have those Saturday morning television shows. You had to do your bit. You had to go on and promote your new release. I quite enjoyed it, actually. You had the parents watching them, and they must have liked what they were seeing, so they'd encourage their kids. And then they'd end up bringing them to the shows.

The early Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets gigs were wild.

I always used to sing in the house and I went to school at Hywel Dda Primary School in Ely. I think they had a puppet-type show there and word got around I could sing. I sang at that puppet performance and used to sing in school. From there, it was in my blood. I didn't want to do anything else but sing.

With the Echoes tour there was quite a lot of people who came to the shows that were attracted by the music and the sentiment on the album.

Life is never a bed of roses, but it's not all doom and gloom either.

Freedom is not a God-given right, we have to earn it.

As you get older, you do try to be a bit wiser.

People have got a preconceived idea of what I look like, what I perform and what my shows are all about. I can understand that, because all they can refer to is 'Top Of The Pops.' But those who come to my shows know better.

To be honest I was never much of an Elvis fan myself.