Andy Rourke

“When I started playing the bass, I became kind of fascinated by it and started investigating various styles of bass playing, and I was really struck with funk music, mainly American funk mus...”

“I had learned classical guitar when I was a kid, and I embraced it, and apparently I got good at it.”

“With Freebass, there were no rules, really. It was all rather chaotic. Obviously, Hooky was playing the high end stuff, which he always does; Mani was doing the bottom end, and I thought I'd...”

“It was strange: I never had an interest in school because from an early age I knew the only thing I wanted to do was to play music! So I didn't feel so bad not going into school when I was s...”

“It has been a pleasure to play with all these artists. Pretenders was a real highlight, but also Damon, aka Badly Drawn Boy, Sinead... Ian Brown... all of these people I learn from and love...”

“Back in the days of the Smiths, when we first started touring England - this is, like, 1984 - there were these two girls. They were literally vicar's daughters, and they used to follow us to...”