Quotes from Denny Laine

I don't have a normal job, so I don't consider retiring.

I just keep to myself and live in the country and visit the cities.

Art is really more musical than it is visual.

Everyone tried to be a singer other than just a player. We had four voices in The Moody Blues.

There's no real animosity, anymore... Me and Paul had a good team and we still are a good team. When Lennon died, Paul said he was never going to let that happen again, he was never going to fall out with anyone again.

I knew Paul when he was in the Beatles. We did the second Beatles British tour with the Moody Blues. And we became friends. I went to a couple of the sessions for the 'Sgt. Pepper' album, we went to parties together, we went to see Jimi Hendrix together.

Brian Jones was a big friend of mine.

I've no real musical training, although I took some piano lessons a while ago.

One of my earliest inspirations was the 'Allan-a-Dale' character played by Elton Hayes in the 1954 movie 'The Story Of Robin Hood And His Merrie Men.' He was a wandering minstrel with his guitar.

Nostalgia is one thing. It's great to go and play the old songs. People know them and appreciate them. You got to give them what they want to hear.

'Mull of Kintyre' was the biggest single of all time up until 'Don't They Know It's Christmas' by that big charity.

I've always been accused of being too clever for my own good.

Colin Blunstone did a cover of one of my songs, and the reason I liked it was he changed it completely from my version.

When you go to a new country, you don't have the same facilities as you had in the one before. You adapt very quickly to the circumstances.

I began writing with Mike Pinder and eventually we went on to form a new band called The M&B, which later became The Moody Blues, what I would call a progressive blues band.

Music is progressive, you get out, you experiment with new people and you grow.

You can't keep away from the public too much, but you had to be protected to some degree and I saw that in Paul a lot. People were obsessive about the Beatles. It's a hard thing to have to deal with being that famous.

Not that I got bored with it all, or I didn't like the people in The Moody Blues. I just wanted to go off and do other things purely because it was out there, you know. I'm kind of glad that I did and that I didn't just stick with one thing.

I enjoyed the idea of going and playing live. My beef was always with Wings that we never played live enough.

After Wings I did a lot of recording rather than live work. I even went into a kind of semi-retirement to places like Spain at one point.

So I wouldn't see Wings as a band that would go into the Hall of Fame, to be honest.

Paul forced the Beatles to work a lot harder than they would have otherwise, and he did the same thing with Wings.

That's what I tend to do - get into a band, and then it gets busy... and you want to get away from it all again. That's what happened with the Moodies and Wings.

My fondest memories are of being hidden away in Scotland or Spain writing and working on songs for Wings.