«Canada is our biggest market,»

«Let's get some hands in the air,»

«Yep, big rich twatty rock stars! Compared to some rappers who've been 'on the scene' 15 minutes, we're minnows… but I won't be back in the factory any time soon! As for the music, it's ALWAYS been the focal point. We were never into it for the money. We wouldn't have spent three years recording a very expensive record, 'Hysteria' , if we were! When I saw Marc Bolan and David Bowie on 'Top of the Pops' I didn't shout, 'Wow! I want to be him for the money.' It was for the glory of it and a way out of dreary old day job land. That wasn't for me, the music gave me a motivation.»

«Viv [guitarist Vivian Campbell ] doesn't like it all that much these days. After all, it was his first with us and he wanted the LEPP thing a bit more. Happily for him, it's back, so you move on. I have some great memories of the recording and writing sessions. For the rest of us, it was very liberating, but like all our albums, some of it works and some of it doesn't. Trust me, there's stuff on 'Hysteria' I'd do over … I love the title track, 'Pearl of Euphoria' is nearly brilliant and 'All I Want Is Everything' was the first song I think I really felt good to have written. It all fell into place at the right time.»

«Well, it wasn't a conscious decision to do that, it just worked out that Phil [Collen , guitar] was hanging out in Los Angeles with [Swedish producer/songwriter] Andreas Carlsson , you know, just coffee, bite to eat, shootin' the shit, that sorta thing, when Andreas said, 'We should write a song together.' Something we all say from time to time but very rarely do. Anyway, it didn't happen, but Andreas did call us about six months later and told us he had a song, 'Unbelievable' , that he thought sounded like us! So, long story short, he sent a copy over, we played it, liked it, recorded it!»

«Same thing with 'Long Long Way to Go' . We like to think we can tell a good song from a so-so song whether it be rock, pop, blues, rap, whatever... Again, for no reason other than curiosity, it was sent to us and we really dug it, so we recorded it. Apparently so did Lionel Ritchie ! Let's not forget here that we DID write the other eleven songs on 'X' !»

«We wanted to show people, absolutely and as a matter of fact, where we came from. We wanted to put to bed the idea that we were weaned on Black Sabbath and Deep Purple. Those were the bands our older brothers listened to. Our true love was always the three-minute pop song.»

«A lot of these bands were huge in Britain but never really made it big in the States,»

«Our only rule was that everything had to come from before we signed our first record deal. The Blondie song ('Hanging on the Telephone') is the most modern one on there. Most of it ended up being from between 1970 and 1973.»

«It's a great honour to have the dean of Coventry Cathedral conducting the service. It will be a very moving occasion.»