Paul Young

“I thought I could make a solo album, then go back to the band. But 'No Parlez' was the end of me and Q-Tips.”

“I think it's really good to get early work experience. I'm not sure if it will happen with my children, but for many young people it's character-building and sets them up for what comes later.”

“I love playing live and I love to travel. I don't get bored by either one.”

“I suppose I was lucky to be born in a time where I was in my early '20s in the '80s. It was just a happening time to be around.”

“Chrysalis Records saw my group, Q-Tips, as a party band. They weren't doing much for our careers.”

“When I was in L.A. in the 80s I got talking to Bruce Springsteen at a dinner party about the Harley-Davidson I'd just bought and he said, 'Do you fancy going for a ride?' No one's going to say no to that are they?”

“When I was at the height of my fame I got my first what you could loosely describe as a mansion! I didn't even find it myself, my keyboard player was leafing through a homes magazine at the dentist's and said, 'You'd like this.' It was art deco and I loved art deco, I lived there for about 14 years.”

“I fancy a safari in South Africa. Watching animals in the wild must be amazing.”

“When I'm not doing solo shows, I'm performing with my cowboy band Los Pacaminos - we play the kind of music you'd hear in Tarantino films.”

“I started off with a paper round when we were just about old enough to drive. I couldn't drive myself, so someone else would have to drive me and I'd drop off the papers.”

“Generally, musicians find that as they get older, their popularity starts to wane. Pre-Covid, however, I was going through a good phase and finding my live shows were really well received.”

“I've always seen myself as a working musician but now there's no money in records for the artist at all, it's all in live performance.”

“I'd been really shy as a kid, I had a terrible stutter, and I thought music would be a good outlet. And it definitely seemed to improve things for me, so I stuck with it.”

“I became a qualified machinist at Vauxhall. For some reason it's been erroneously reported that I used to screw on hubcaps, but that's not true. You can't screw on a hubcap, anyway, so I have no idea where that came from.”

“Someone at an airport in Germany asked me to sing Wherever I Lay My Hat. It's strange, they wouldn't ask people in other professions to perform on the spot.”

“I don't travel that much with my band Los Pacaminos as it's quite a big crowd, but we got invited down to southern Italy once.”

“I'm desperate to learn how to sail a boat.”

“Even as a child I knew I wanted to be a singer, and in 1976, at the age of 20, I quit my job at Vauxhall Motors in Luton and became a musician.”

“Recording everything with analogue equipment, as we did with 'No Parlez,' left space for the sorts of happy accidents that can make the most interesting sounds.”

“I'm not a big fan of reality TV shows.”