I'm quite ignorant about fashion and I'm colourblind so it's all a tad tricky. My only knowledge of that world comes through Christopher Bailey whom I first met in 2008 when I did a campaign for Burberry that featured musicians artists actors and sportsmen.

A jazz musician can improvise based on his knowledge of music. He understands how things go together. For a chef once you have that basis that's when cuisine is truly exciting.

Regardless of who originally made it popular any hit song becomes a challenge to the ingenuity and imagination of other musicians and performers.

For some reason I can't explain artist and musicians tend to look younger than our age. Being in music you need this youthful sense of discovery and wonder for what you're doing and keep your imagination open. That's a youthful way of looking at life and I think that reflects in how you age.

I want to be taken seriously as the type of musician that plays stuff like an electric rake. I mean how seriously do you take someone like Spike Jones? They take him pretty seriously - a really good musician who made a great contribution in terms of humor which is part of what I try to do too.

If someone decides to be a musician now it means because there is no hope of money at the end of it it means they really want to be a musician. And if someone is writing now there is no hope for money at the end of it.

I try to devote my afternoons to making music in my home studio but it's a lot more fun hanging out with musicians and friends and trying subtly to influence a band than making your own stuff.

You can't fake this music. You might be a great singer or a great musician but in the need that's got nothing to do with it. It's how you connect to the songs and to the history behind them.

If our history can challenge the next wave of musicians to keep moving and changing to keep spiritually hungry and horny that's what it's all about.

As musicians and artists it's important we have an environment - and I guess when I say environment I really mean the industry that really nurtures these gifts. Oftentimes the machine can overlook the need to take care of the people who produce the sounds that have a lot to do with the health and well-being of society.

Musicians are probably the most uncomfortable people in themselves in the world. Happiness I think only exists when you're a child and once you go past 11 unfortunately it's gone.

The pop musicians often leave meaning in the dust and substitute it for cartoons. The deeper artists - the grunge artists in the world and the emoticon people - tend to leave all of the happiness out of life like it just doesn't exist.

It was physically difficult adjusting to wheelchair life but I remember a great relief and happiness that I was finally getting somewhere finding musicians to work with that were sympathetic.

I always seem to have a vague feeling that he is a Satan among musicians a fallen angel in the darkness who is perpetually seeking to fight his way back to happiness.

I mean just because you're a musician doesn't mean all your ideas are about music. So every once in a while I get an idea about plumbing I get an idea about city government and they come the way they come.

And as I grew older I then auditioned for the Royal Academy of Music in London and they said well no we won't accept you because we haven't a clue - you know - of the future of a so-called 'deaf' musician. And I just couldn't quite accept that.

I really wanted to just be a musician. I didn't want to be anything else but I was funny and all that.

It's funny when bands or younger musicians ask me: 'So what does it take to make it?' Well first explain to me what you mean by 'making it': Do you want to be a rock star or do you want music to be your livelihood?

It's funny: I'm a lifelong musician but because I principally play the piano it's been a solitary thing.

You know fame is a funny thing man especially you know actors musicians rappers rock singers it's kind of a lifestyle and it's easy to get caught up in it - you go to bars you go to clubs everyone's doing a certain thing... It's tough.

Maybe a part of me recognized how right the improvising spirit of jazz is. Not the sounds but the freedom to work with musicians who work that way. It felt very natural to me but I think there's a way to do it without it being a jazz record.

Jazz stands for freedom. It's supposed to be the voice of freedom: Get out there and improvise and take chances and don't be a perfectionist - leave that to the classical musicians.

When I was 19 I made my first good week's pay as a club musician. It was enough money for me to quit my job at the factory and still pay the rent and buy some food. I freaked.

My wife Elizabeth and I started The Really Terrible Orchestra for people like us who are pretty hopeless musicians who would like to play in an orchestra. It has been a great success. We give performances we've become the most famous bad orchestra in the world.