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What are the major challenges that you have faced in your career? I spent 13 years in bands, trying to get a record deal and have a hit, that was challenging on every level and I wound up feeling like a thirty year old failure. I had to pick myself up and start a new career, and that was a very different kind of challenge. It's been interesting. The challenge now is to stay excited, stay involved, and keep doing work that makes me glad to have this rather peculiar job, which, let's face it, is a ridiculous occupation for a middle aged man. Looking back, has someone tried to control your creative freedom somehow? I have always been very headstrong, very passionate and very argumentative, so I push hard for the things I believe in. What I do as a journalist has constraints that I have to recognise and really I work with my editors to create the kind of music writing that suits the publication. That's a limit. I don't have the freedom of a poet or a songwriter and sometimes I find myself at loggerheads with my employers. But it keeps things interesting. Now tell us about your "Killing Bono" book, recently released in Italian. How long did it take to write? I wrote it very quickly, in about seven weeks, but I had already had a lifetime to think about It. It's the story of my failed career as a musician, in a band that started out with my schoolfriends in U2. It was quite hard to watch them going on to world beating success whilst I was stuck at the bottom level of the music business, but my own rather dismal career is probably more true of most musician's experiences. Commercial success is rare, and we losers will always outnumber the winners. I thought it would be funny to write a guide that was really "How NOT To Succeed In The Music Business." And I learned a lot about myself along the way, and I was able to try and answer the question of why my friend Bono made it and I didn't. It takes talent, sure, but it takes perseverance and luck too. Probably luck most of all. Now I tell any band that comes to me for advice that they should always put the music first, do things for the right reasons to the best of your ability and try and have fun. Then, if commercial success comes, you'll have a great career but even if you don't succeed, you'll still have had the pleasure of making great music. Music should be its own reward. Which band would you like to play in nowadays? Why? I still play in a band, because music is for life. I just don't try and push it on anyone else anymore. I play with a bunch of old rockers (including the drummer in my old band, Shook Up!) and we call ourselves Groovy Dad and actually we're pretty shockingly good. If I had had this band at 21, I'd have taken over the world. But at 51, it's just a hobby, and we play for the sheer pleasure of it. And I hope I'm still doing it when I'm a Groovy Grandad. Has reading been compromised or enhanced by the digital world with its interactivity? How? Technology changes but the instincts to create art, to write and read and share experience will always be the same. It's a challenging time for journalists, for sure, as the old media is being changed completely by the barrier-less interactivity of the Internet. But it's also an exciting time, new forms of communication are emerging and the role of the professional journalist as gatekeeper to the news and arts is becoming redundant. Oldies tend to grumble about change but if I was young, I'd be thrilled by all the new possibilities. On a bad day, I might grumble about my job effectively becoming shoveling shit into a bottomless pit. On a good day, I enjoy the privilege of participating in an ongoing conversation about modern music. Who surprises you today (bands, artists, musicians, writers)? There is so much good music and so little time! I am fascinated by Kanye West, he is X 86