Guy Garvey Quotations

I'm not David Bowie. Who are we kidding? At the end of the day, I'm the same person I've always been. I'm Don Garvey's son from up the road.

I remember going foraging for breakfast in St. Louis once. I saw this one girl sitting in front of the venue, and she made this pink T-shirt with a big heart in the middle of it and a misty picture of our guitarist Mark [Potter]. She was so embarrassed when she saw me. And I was trying desperately not to laugh.

The British press isn't as vicious as it used to be, and these days it's sort of cool to care again. Everyone loves an everyman anthem.

We [Elbow] have had some luck with media syncs in film and on TV. We'd love to do a soundtrack with a really cool director.

"Open Arms" has a lot of unison singing in it. And it works: Grown men will come to our gigs and cry during that one.

As long as people are listening that's all that matters.

Maybe Radiohead and R.E.M. Even a group like the National - artists who have crossed over without compromising. It's a special thing.

I think 'Elbow' were considered successful even before [2008's] Seldom Seen Kid because we were living off the band. We have a great manager who keeps our coffers topped off, and we give ourselves a sensible wage with a view to having three fallow years between records. We always make sure we have enough money to make a record and not be pressured time-wise.

It's as close to a normal job as I've ever had in terms of the working hours. We go in from 10 to 5, come out for a little bit, have dinner, and come back out for the evening shift. We worked Monday through Friday, and it was nice like that.

Generally I just go through my journals and think about what's going on at the time. There's never really an agenda, thematically, and I'd be lying if I said I had a hard goal. It's just what's there (in my journals) and where the music takes me. If anything, the five of us being at home and near the people that we loved (while recording the album) inspired me.