"There's a reason that I left this one for last. I put it in this position because it seemed like the natural conclusion to this collection of songs. It's the climax, it's the one that gathers everything up and then sums everything up emotionally. It's the finale - everything's building up to this moment. There's centuries of pain, tragedy and - again - loss in his voice, it's undeniable. “The lyrics are based around one extremely simple metaphor, but so much that's good in art, whether we're talking about visual art or songwriting or performance art or literature or poetry, so much that's truly powerful takes one easily understood idea and then brings depth to it. That's what's happening here - it's a metaphor that you instantly understand. It's like looking at a Picasso painting; you're immediately struck by the image, but there's so much more going on beneath the surface. You can listen to it hundreds of times and not feel as if you've exhausted its emotional content. “We were talking about Trish Keenan earlier, but she seems like one of the exceptions to the rule I subscribe to, which is that you should be able to understand everything purely from the performance and the lyrics. You shouldn't need to know anything about the artist's personal life. Paul Robeson was this gargantuan figure of the twentieth century; there was that intelligence, integrity and, for the most part, nobility to him, going as he did from singer to actor to petitioning the President of the United States, but you wouldn't even have to know the slightest thing about him, and you'd still have that instant reaction to this song; there's so much emotional power to it. “I don't know how I'd deal with life if I didn't have music like this - to help me go through it, and to help me understand it.”"

"This was the same year as the Roxy record. Mott has split up by that point. They splintered: Mott the Hoople became simply Mott and Mick Ronson and Ian Hunter went off doing their own thing. You could follow them both. I saw Mott at the Top Rank and I saw Ian Hunter and Mick Ronson at Sheffield City Hall. This still sounds fresh today: it was raw, done in a month. His guitar playing here is as good as it was on any record. There was a solo on a song called 'The Truth The Whole Truth And Nothing But The Truth' - it's one of those things you'd play to a kid whose learning how to play the guitar. The way he winds it up; the sheer pain in the song. Apparently at the time he'd read a scathing review and was fucking furious. He went in and did the whole thing in one take. And I'm thinking 'in a parallel universe, this would have been the next Mott the Hopple record' you know? But my god did the other guys blow it; my god did they blow it. This would have been such a great Mott record. To this day, Phil Collen [Def Leppard guitarist] will say his vibrato is Ronson's vibrato. A lot of people can't do vibrato properly - Phil was definitely influenced by it, also by that beautiful open whammy tone. I'm not sure how it leaks into Leppard as a whole. I think the most logical theft we ever did was the 'Whooaah' section on 'Photograph'. The guys in the band are all great singers; they're arguably better than me. Put the four of us together and it's like Queen round the mike. Well: almost..."