Well I don’t listen to Be-Bop Deluxe albums for pleasure. I listen to them when I have to do for a particular purpose. It might be to choose a track to play at a radio interview, or to discuss it in an interview, or if I had to sit down and learn it, I’d have to put the record on!

I’ll sometimes play a track to someone who maybe hasn’t heard Be-Bop Deluxe and asks what it was like.

As far as the other band members, Charlie Tumahai was the last person from the band that I had contact with. I remember when I was recording the ‘Getting The Holy Ghost Across’ album, I was down at Surrey Sound studio, and Charlie came down to see me. It was just before he moved back to Australia or New Zealand. I got the occasional card from him at Christmas. Simon I haven’t seen for a long time, or Andy. My biggest failing is communication with people. I'm really bad at remembering to keep in touch, or to make a call or to even think to make a call. It’s a terrible weakness I have, it’s not meant in any negative way, just that I get wrapped up in things that I'm doing and the social scene isn’t my strong point. I regret losing contact with them, I’d love to see Simon and Andy again, even if it was just to meet up in a pub and reminisce about old times.

Andy I understand lives in Bath and has his own little recording set up, he was doing jingles and library music at one time, I don’t know whether that is still the case, he’s done a lot of sessions for people. I would really like to meet him again and speak with him.

Simon, well it’s a long, long time ago since I last heard from Simon. He was with a Canadian band called ‘Blazer Blazer’ for a while; I just don’t know what’s happened to him or where he is. Again, I liked Simon very much. I'm much more fond of the ‘human’ side of what went on in Be-Bop Deluxe now, than some years ago. Simply because in those days I was so intensely wrapped up in music, to such a degree that I sometimes missed out on the fact that I was very lucky to be with those good people, who were helping me make that music. It’s not that I treated them badly, or anything like that. But I tended to be absorbed in the work all the time, people seem to slide away, years go by and I suddenly realise that I did enjoy being with those people. Simon was good fun to be around, I liked his soul. So I’d love to see them again.

Be-Bop was the foundation of my professional musical life. That was the time when it was established that this is what I shall do for the rest of my life. The band members all contributed to that being possible, so with a wiser and older head on my shoulders, I can look back and say that those people were generous in being around me at that time.

I've no idea what Harold’s intention was with that, I think it was something that Andy and Harold hatched together. I do know John Foxx, I spoke to him on the phone two or three years ago, my album ‘Chimera’ was recorded in the studio that he owned at that time.

Andy Partridge, I've been out for a meal with, I've been to a couple of his gigs and once spoke quite often with him over the phone. One time he suggested to me that he and I do something together, and I never got round to following it up. Andy is a tremendously talented musician.

No.

A guy who was involved in writing a biography of Gary’s asked me to contribute something, my reminiscences about recording with Gary on the Warriors album. But I couldn’t really think of anything positive to say about the experience. I'm not blaming Gary for any of that. Gary is Gary, and I am who I am, but I think as he noted in his autobiography, we have a totally different approach to music, different views on what music is and isn’t. Whilst it was an interesting experience doing the album, there was a lot of friction in many ways, and I didn’t feel as comfortable as I might, I had no real desire to go further with it. So when I was approached about this particular thing, I thought it best to leave it where it was.

Are you a John Coltrane or Pharaoh Sanders fan?

Yes. To both.

Well the original plan was to do it through DGM, but the whole DGM set up is changing at the moment, which is best not for me to comment on really. Those changes mean that there aren’t the resources to release the back-catalogue, which was the original plan when I went with DGM. So I plan to try and do a little bit at a time, through the ‘Toneswoon’ label, which is a coverall name for anything I release independent of a proper record company. These will be made available through Lenin Imports, bit by bit. If a better opportunity comes along in the meantime, to get them out in a much more heavily marketed manner, then the option is to do that. But we’ll carry on a little bit at a time.

‘Simplex’ will be out soon, the next step after that will be ‘Noise Candy’, which isn’t a re-issue at all, but a ‘new’ old piece. Then we’ll look at what might be the next back-catalogue item after that. It’s unpredictable and very typical of the kind of times we live in, you can’t really make hard plans any more, you just have to take opportunities when they arise, and make the best of what you have.