Quotes from Imelda May

There's no point in bringing together a talented band if you don't let them do their thing.

Everybody told me that if I insisted on doing rockabilly music, I'd never have a chance of selling any records. In fact, I lost count of how many people told me to ditch it all together, in favour, I guess, of sounding like everybody else.

I'm not comparing myself at all to him, but I like the idea that Ernest Hemingway always wrote about certain things he knew, he knew the ins and outs, back to fronts of what he was talking about. I love that as an inspiration for myself, to keep it true to what you know.

In a way, I'm lucky that I was never classically trained and never went to a music college. I'm just from a normal working class family and happened to get obsessed with music as a teenager.

I started singing in church with my sister Maria when I was four, and I've been pretty much singing ever since. There's never been anything else for me to do.

I lost a boyfriend over Elmore James. You know that moment when you send mixtapes at fifteen? He sent me pop hits, and I sent him Elmore James, and I never heard from him again.

I love people with strong convictions, because we are living in a very PC world. You can't crack a joke without it being in the headlines.

I remember once doing a gig in Ireland, and there was a woman jumping around and screaming, 'I don't know what this is but I love it!' I thought that was a nice compliment.

Music was always part of my life - my mother says I came out singing. I wanted to be Gene Kelly - or Judy Garland.

I love to cook. I love having friends over and family. I am definitely a feeder - I feed everybody. I am jumping around the kitchen like a crazy woman.

I'm the youngest of five - three girls and two boys. There was one record player for the seven of us. It was good for me, because I got to hear everyone else's music.

Don't lie - when you are 105 years of age - on your deathbed, thinking, 'I should have done a few things!' I would like to think I tried as much as I could.

I love to have no plans. It is amazing where your day can turn when you have no plans: meeting people or just going to a little pub on the side of the road.

With great artists like Elvis, sometimes the songs weren't the greatest thing about him. When I tried to perform some of the songs, I noticed some of the tunes weren't all that brilliant, but it was the performance that sold them.

In 2008, I was in a London park when I came across a fledgling crow that had fallen from the top of an oak tree. A woman happened to be passing, and she said that she rescued animals, so she invited me back to her house. It turned out she was the wife of Jeff Beck. Jeff was there, and we ended up jamming together.

'Love Tattoo' I recorded without a record company. I'd gotten turned down by the record companies - they said they didn't get me, which is fine, I suppose.

I've used a stylist twice, and that was when I didn't have time to go shopping or pick up an outfit for a photo shoot. I think you should dress yourself, have fun with it - it's only clothes.

I'm sorry, but Juicy Couture tracksuits and Ugg boots don't move me in any way, shape or form. I refuse to wear them. Modern fashion doesn't appeal to me; the 1950s were better in every way, don't you think?

I never got formal training in music. I would just sit with my ear to the speaker and my hand on the needle. I'd listen to Wanda Jackson and think, 'How did she do that?,' and lift the needle and try it myself.

I am not musically educated yet. I don't read - I make my own language that works for myself. But I play by ear.

I love festivals in that people seem to let their hair down more. I love that people run from stage to stage. I love going as a performer because you get to see band that you wouldn't necessarily go see.

I was from a tough neighborhood, and we didn't have a lot of money, but my dad worked hard, and my mom is good at budgeting things. That made me appreciate things.

I love to look back, but I don't want my music to be nostalgic. I want it to have the same vibrancy that the music I love had when it came out. I'm trying to get that electricity.

I was brought up with beautiful music - Nat King Cole and Glen Miller from my dad, and my mum loved Judy Garland and Doris Day - brilliant stuff. Through my brothers and sisters I heard David Bowie and The Specials, The Carpenters, Meatloaf and The Rolling Stones.