Mick Hucknall
I'm from the punk generation, but I make romantic, soft soul music. I like the bizarre disconnect of that but, clearly, some people don't.Collection: Romantic
Around 1988 I started to 'dread' my hair; because it's curly, it would go into dreads naturally if I stopped combing it. But the dreads went down only one side, so I had to have extensions put in.
My dad was one of the reasons I kept Simply Red going so long. I was brought up to stick at things. I was the only songwriter in Simply Red, so I could have toured under my own banner. But I'd developed the name, so I stuck with it.
Copyright promotes artistic creativity and the free circulation of ideas.
I keep reading that I'm diminutive - why do people call me that? I'm 5ft 11in with size 11 feet. I'd actually like smaller feet. It might be a fetish, but I do like graceful feet, and small ones lend themselves to grace.
I actually felt sorry for Liverpool bands like Bunnymen and Wah!, having this immense pressure of following the Beatles. I suppose I responded to that challenge by being nothing like them. I carved my own thing.
I am a 'champagne socialist,' and I'm proud of it.
For some, music is a limitless source of cheap content, just waiting to be exploited.
Money's Too Tight to Mention' was about as big an anti-Thatcherite message as you can get in pop music. There was a vast swath of the British media at that time that were rabid Thatcherites; do you think they are going to take kindly to me? Then I got hit by the left, because we were too popular.
I wish I had known my mother, but I've only met her twice. I can only figure about people who were there for me and she wasn't.
When we treat music as an industrial commodity, and young people as merely consumers, we overlook the joy of participating in music... of learning to play an instrument, of joining a band or an orchestra, and playing gigs.
I had a spate of being run over between the ages of 11 and 13. I was quite a rambunctious child, I had a little moped I used to ride illegally. I got hit by cars three times because I was a very day-dreamy kid.
People always tell me that redheads go silver. Long, silver-grey hair would be my ideal way of ageing.
Tom Jones told me only a few singers have got the pipes, and he's right. He has. Sinatra did. I have.
There's no such thing as a typical day because I lead a very random life.
I always used to listen to quite a bit of classical music because my dad liked it, and if you've got any ear for music at all you have to enjoy Mozart.
Being abandoned by my mother gives me a sense of insecurity that I will never recover from. I have to try and recreate that balance by trying to create a sense of self-worth. And yes, being on stage is a part of that.
Whatever I do winds people up. I've been tattooed with every one of those criticisms.
I feel a bit like the antichrist as I had the bulk of my success in the 80s and I hate 80s music.
I am one of the best singer-songwriters this country has produced. Ever.
My long-term girlfriends have always had something special about them.
Whatever the means of delivery, whatever the technological and corporate structures, music will always be about groups of talented individual performers communicating emotionally with individual fans.
I grew up in Denton, east Manchester, and was raised by my late father, Reg, a barber.
Ageing is something to celebrate. If you can avoid long-term debilitating injury and illness, it's something you have to embrace because the other choice is being dead. So embrace it, grow with it. And that's what I try and do.
People are racist about redheads in a way they'd never dare to be about black or Asian people.
People strive for success, but it's very lonely at the top. Now I realise the ultimate prize is a family.
Corbyn Labour's budget numbers simply don't add up on the NHS and the economy.
Privatization of utilities costs would be astronomical, as would setting up a National Bank.
To properly fund the NHS, we must ALL chip in. As a fully paid U.K. tax resident since 1985, I'd be proud to contribute to that.
A red-headed man is not generally considered to be a sexual icon.
I wanted love from every single woman on the planet because I didn't have my mother's love.
I don't want to be a slave to commercial success any more.
The Beatles and the Stones had Elvis and Hollywood, but when it came to my generation America meant Richard Nixon and Vietnam.
I loved the African-American culture, but racism was still a big problem and white America was exactly what I didn't love.
I just want to write songs in my little corner. And I still love music, I've not been worn down by cynicism.
I'm a troublemaker.
I like good food and I've always had a very natural empathy with women.
I knew I was famous the day I played football with mates in L.A. I scored a goal and Rod Stewart jumped on top of me. I thought: 'I had a poster of you on my wall when I was 12.'
Tony Blair's a friend.
At art school, a teacher said: 'The best paintings are when you get lost in a piece of work and start painting in a stream of consciousness.' I wanted to do music, not art, so started writing lyrics that way. The first song I wrote was called 'Ice Cream and Wafers.' The next was 'Holding Back the Years.'
My mum left when I was three and my dad never remarried.
I first sang 'Holding Back the Years' in my earliest band, Frantic Elevators. When the Elevators split and I started Simply Red, I returned to the song and wrote the 'I'll keep holding on' chorus.
I feel enormously privileged to be part of the generation that witnessed the magic of the Beatles first hand, and I think 'A Hard Day's Night' connected with my four-year-old self because it was the whole package: an album and a movie.
My dad knew I was mad about music. While he worked as a barber he would hear songs on the radio and we'd have endless discussions about them. So I got my first record player when I was 11 years old.
I first heard Miles Davis as a student, when I was struck by his extraordinary musicianship, and his work did affect some of the sounds of Simply Red. He was one of the reasons I chose to have a muted trumpet on 'Holding Back the Years.'
Allowing valuable sound recordings to pass into the public domain does not create a public asset: it represents a massive destruction of U.K. wealth and a significant loss to the U.K. taxpayer.
Copyright is fundamentally socialist - it is radical and redistributive, subversive even. How else would you describe a form of property that anyone can create out of nothing?
Copyright's democratising effect is seen most clearly in the music business. Anyone who can speak, sing, rap or hum and operate a simple sound recorder can create a copyright song. Imagination is the only limit.
Strong copyright protection is not only compatible with future digital business models: it is an essential pre-condition of their success.
Comfortable and political can go together quite well.