Roger Taylor

One Christmas, when Freddie and I were flatmates in Kensington, we were trying to cook Christmas dinner but all we had was a packet of bread sauce that you make with water. We used to dream of a can of beans. (…) At Ridge Farm, when we weren’t working we would swim, play bad tennis, bad snooker and be beaten at table tennis by Freddie. I think he had been the champion at his boarding school and I never, ever saw him lose a game. That summer was more like a youth club rather than wild parties. In the evenings we would go down to the pub, come back to the barn and play more music.

I picked up a guitar and found it very difficult and I sort of graduated to drums because I found them very easy – I suppose it was a case of natural aptitude. Mitch Mitchell was my role model at the time, and I still think listening to Mitch Mitchell, especially the early stuff with Hendrix (Jimi Hendrix), is just fantastic.

I love Led Zeppelin, they were four prodigiously talented musicians. The magical combination of Jimmy Page and Robert Plant underpinned by the best rhythm section, John Paul Jones on bass and the best rock n’roll drummer in the world, John Bonham.

Paul is not someone trying to be Freddie. He’s someone trying to take this somewhere else… I’m very excited about working it all out.

[On drum machines] Fantastic to write with. They have their place, they’re terribly useful to the musician, but they’re just another tool. They never will replace a good drummer. A lot of the bands that use them, I call them typewriter bands because basically they program the sample sounds with no real dynamics, and that dynamics is very important. And the records come out sounding very flat and very 2-dimensional whereas something with real dynamics and a good drummer can add another dimension – depth – to the band and that’s why bands that play together when they’re actually making the record will always sound better.

I saw Buddy Rich playing. He was wonderful, fantastic. I would say of just sheer technique he’s the best I’ve ever seen.

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.

I hate that the paparazzi agencies get all of the fan accounts shut down! Ugh we have to think of something! Maybe start our own agency? And let all of the fans post whatever tf they want!!!!!

My vocal style I haven’t tried to copy from anyone. It just developed until it became the girlish whine it is today.

[On his first red carpet experience] I walked out the wrong car door and started walking into the crowd, An interviewer said, ‘Give your best horror scream,’ and Stan did this great scream and I was too much of a wimp to do one. It was pathetic!

Congratulations, Congress! 77% disapproval rating! You may be about to become the English language’s most offensive C-word.

I gossiped when I was given a chance because I wasn’t popular so the few times someone would invite you into the group to have a conversation it was usually about someone else and you just joined in because it was great to be a part of something, and that I feel bad for.

But I love to entertain. My vocation is to accrue all these experiences, to write about them, to get them out of my system, to not get sick, and then to share them publicly.

If I had to describe (the past ten years) I would say ‘blessed’. Blessed and highly favoured, because the things that have happened to me have been once in a lifetime.

Then I got a call the next day from the assistant director saying that they were putting me on a personal training programme. I thought that would be pretty cool, because it would make me take it seriously. It was run by one of the stunt team, who are the most absurdly fit guys inthe world. I can’t even do 10 press ups. I did about three weeks of that, and in the end I think he got so bored of trying to force me to do it that he wrote it all down so that I could do it at home.

I don’t think it makes me a role model. I think it makes me inspiring. Cause I’m from the bottom I think they look at me and go ‘well, if he made it, I can make it’

The most romantic thing, a lovely boy bought me a dress once. He got my measurements, actually they were from “The Notebook” and I had them sitting somewhere, and he found them and bought me this dress, tailor-made, this beautiful little black cocktail dress. And I thought that was very, very classy.

Politics and prostitution have to be the only jobs where inexperience is considered a virtue. In what other profession would you brag about not knowing stuff? I’m not one of those fancy Harvard heart surgeons. I’m just an unlicensed plumber with a dream and I’d like to cut your chest open. The crowd cheers.

Very rarely artists come in on their own terms and get to do everything – whatever they want…it doesn’t really matter about talent in the beginning. Talent is what keeps you here, getting in the door is just about how you start in the music business.

Yeah, it’s tough being smart and sexy, too. I have to say, I’m really not that attractive. Until I met my husband, I could not get a date. I promise you it’s true. My husband Jeff Richmond saw a diamond in the rough and took me in.

I remember failing my Princeton interview. My mom wanted me to apply because ever since I was a kid she had this dream that I would apply to Princeton, but it was just not happening.