It's a miracle was the last track recorded for the album we based it on the rhythm from the middle of 'Late Home Tonight where there's Graham Broad playing lots and lots of drums with me shouting in the background pretending to be a mad Arab leader.

Playing drums feels like coming home for me. Even during the White Stripes I thought: 'I'll do this for now but I'm really a drummer.' That's what I'll put on my passport application.

A few years ago kids from poor areas in France were asked to draw items of food. For a chicken they drew a drumstick. For a fish they drew a fish stick. Those are extremes but there is a lot that needs to be done to help children discover good food.

Unless you're living on the street and surviving on a diet of discarded turkey drumsticks there's no point in being gloomy. We've spent too long trying to cheer ourselves up by spending money on brightly coloured things we don't really need. We've stopped using our imaginations.

Cool things happen. Ace's guitar flies through space goes through a hole and blows up. I throw drumsticks and they come flying at you.

I always thought it would be really cool to be playing the drums in the show and then have your astral body or whatever travel all through the audience and dig whatever it's like out there.

The bass player's function along with the drums is to be the engine that drives the car... everything else is merely colours.

I do seem to like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.

I like to combine the dramatic emotional warmth of strings with the grooves and body business of drums and bass.