Ian Brown
People in Russia learned English off the Beatles. People in Japan learned English off the Stone Roses. Noel Gallagher says music can't change the world, but the Roses made him want to start a group, so it changed his world.
I can't think of anyone who's reformed for art's sake. That's why the Roses will never reform.
In March 1977, I taped the single 'Career Opportunities' off Piccadilly Radio, which was the '70s equivalent of downloading, and then the album came out in April 1977.
I was really into punk when I was about 14.
The Roses should have made it as the biggest band since The Beatles, but we didn't.
I wasn't on stage to be worshipped or for people to look up to me. I was with the crowd.
We started out to finish groups like U2 - that was what it was all about.
Even me mum can't tell me what to do.
I spent the summer of '88 indoors, writing 'Shoot You Down,' 'Bye Bye Badman,' and 'Don't Stop.'
You're never alone on the dole in Manchester.
The jails are full of kids from kids' homes. You're 16 years old, and you're out on the street. How you going to fend for yourself at 16 if you've not had an education? You're going to turn to crime.
People want to adulate people.
I was jailed for using words that I still dispute. Anyone who's ever met me will tell you that I'm not a violent person.
I'm lucky enough to be one of them music makers who can do a dance festie or a rock festie.
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.
I started doing karate when I was 11.
I gave it up three weeks before my black belt, foolishly. I got to my third brown belt and must have trained for 18 months but never went for it. I was nearly 18 and got this thing in my head about, ' Who are they to grade me?' Trying to be a rebel when I should have done it. It's my only regret, not going for a black belt.
At primary school, I thought I was George Best. Then I got to secondary school, and it was more serious.
We should be growing carrots up the side of the Empire State Building or Big Ben.
We need to ban all air-freighted food. Carrots from Holland. Potatoes from Egypt. It's got to stop.
Permacultures - where you use the immediate environment to grow food - should be mandatory.
People have to realise you don't help African children singing along to 60-year-old men playing their tunes from 40 years ago.
I'm only really good at making music. I wasn't convinced when I started out, but then I heard the first Stone Roses' LP.
Honestly, going solo is the second best thing that's ever happened to me after my kids.
You're never going to improve on a Michael Jackson song if you cover it.
It is a fact that everyone's got a limited run in music - but who's to say how long that run lasts? I used to think that there would be no way I'd still be in music when I was 40. I used to think anyone who was 40 was an old man, and they probably shouldn't be doing it anymore.
I feel like I've established myself as a music maker in my own right.
I'd never been paid for the first Roses LP - it was 2002 before we received any royalties.
My wife is Mexican, and she's really influenced me: She's got an impressive collection of Mexican music.
Every time I do interviews, they ask me about the same things - poverty, war, and the power of the church.
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.
Northern soul was huge in Manchester in the '70s and '80s; I went to a lot of all-nighters.
I love harmonicas - old blues players like Sonny Boy Williamson.
We wrote 'Stellify' for Rihanna, but as we got to the end of writing it, I thought, 'You know what? I'm gonna keep this for myself. We'll give her another one.' She'd have probably sung it better, but it is too good for me not to do it.
I actually was able to give up shopping in February '99.
By 1993, the Stone Roses had become this huge, beautiful cruise ship just floating about in the middle of nowhere with no captain.
We're the most important group in the world.
Even on songs we've got that are about a girl, there's always something there that's a call to insurrection.
I never wanted to be a pop singer, but I always watched pop programs and knew I could do better than the people I was seeing.
I like the fact that a group can become successful, and by way of what you are, you can show up all the other people who are around you.
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.
With the Roses, I knew we were great; I felt that we would achieve something. On my own, I had no idea.
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.'
If I was in the gutter, and my kids lived on the kerb, I'd go and get a job in B&Q before I'd reform the Roses. I gave everything I had to the Stone Roses and ended up hitting a brick wall. I'm never going to give anyone a foothold on that wall again.
Since we were kids, we grow up believing that astronauts are heroes - that to go up in a rocket is a heroic thing. These guys are bigger than movie stars. To me, it's... all a well-dressed-up lie, basically. There's billions spent on rockets up there, and there's millions starving down here. It don't make sense to me.
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.
I've got six solo albums. I've been round the world three times. I don't even think about the Roses.
I went into jail with absolutely no respect whatsoever for authority, and I came out with even less.
England's a small nation, and the pop music industry is built on fashion.