Quotes from Ian Brown

The Roses should have made it as the biggest band since The Beatles, but we didn't.

I don't like to play anywhere with a banner for Carlsberg or vodka or whatever. I'm not a drinker myself, and I don't like feeling like I'm working for the liquor companies.

My biggest fault is that I give people too much credit. Then they let you down. I'm 99.9 per cent perfect - that's how I look at myself and, therefore, everybody else too.

When I was 9, I was into T. Rex, Gary Glitter, and Alice Cooper. I knew The Beatles because my nan introduced me to them, but T. Rex was the first band I got into myself. I got 'Metal Guru' a few months after hearing 'Children of the Revolution' in Pwllheli in North Wales at a market.

I love harmonicas - old blues players like Sonny Boy Williamson.

I spent the summer of '88 indoors, writing 'Shoot You Down,' 'Bye Bye Badman,' and 'Don't Stop.'

Oasis are okay, but they're like The Sun: base.

We feel we're the only British group worth exporting since the Sex Pistols, definitely.

We should be growing carrots up the side of the Empire State Building or Big Ben.

We believe that anyone can do anything, and everyone's a star. And that's evident from the shows we do. It just feels like a whole bunch of people in a room celebrating something - maybe just being alive.

I've never chatted up a girl in me life. I've always let girls come to me. I've never approached a girl to chat her up.

I like a lot of that Chicago stuff, house music.

The money's always been on the table. We could have took that money any time we wanted - every year, two, three times a year we've had offers, all the way down the line.

I'd like to write songs for other people, see things from a different perspective. I'd like to watch things from the dugout instead of the pitch.

I feel like the Roses were a great group, but I never wanted to try to do it again. I knew I couldn't get a band that would compare to the Roses, that would have an impact like the Roses.

England's a small nation, and the pop music industry is built on fashion.

We need to ban all air-freighted food. Carrots from Holland. Potatoes from Egypt. It's got to stop.

I wasn't on stage to be worshipped or for people to look up to me. I was with the crowd.

Belief outweighs talent. Self-belief's got me everything, self-belief.

I've always said prayers.

I am gentle. I think nearly everyone who makes music is sensitive - I don't care how hard they pretend they are.

I went into jail with absolutely no respect whatsoever for authority, and I came out with even less.

At primary school, I thought I was George Best. Then I got to secondary school, and it was more serious.

I wrote a lot of lyrics in prison, but they'd all be like, 'Crawls upon the shoulders, hatred in the eyes.' I wrote about 50 songs in there that were all about jail. I've come out and thought, 'I've only served eight weeks; I can't really write a concept album about jail.'