Karlheinz Stockhausen

I like him not so much as a musician, more as a philosopher. I learned about him at school when I was about 11. He just had pretty cool ideas about the universe. He’s just pissed off with the world’s tendency to be conservative and not allowing you to go with the flow.

As a philosopher, he’s just a top person for the century. I agree more with him as a philosopher than with any other person. There are a lot of books that are on interviews he did and also collections of his lectures. It’s not like I was sort of learning about Jean-Paul Sartre and able to discuss his theories backwards and forwards, it’s just he had a certain view. Certain people have a view on things and they’re called phílosophers, I suppose.

I get so pissed off with people that think old times were great, and old music is great, and the ’70s were great, and they don’t look ahead, they’re scared to tear themselves away from the past and go forward. He just has this optimism about his views, which I like.

New Musical Express, 26 february 1994