“What other music do I listen to besides The Roches? Well in my car stereo system in Wimborne Dorset I have some Javanese gamelan which I’ve been listening to for quite some time and the very latest things I’m trying out is the complete Paganini Etudes and Violin Concertos...I’m not sure I like them either but putting that in context of the time when Paganini was out and doing his number there was only two ways of being successful professional musician. One was writing opera and the other was being a virtuoso musician. Whereas in the 18th Century there was court patronage; you could be a hired punter at the local court but following the Napoleonic turmoil in Europe that went out the window. The old brigade didn’t have the bread any longer. So the ordinary gigster was down on his luck. So if you could write you wrote opera and if you could play you played ferociously. Paganini practiced 17 hours a day and also had the showbiz element really down pat.”
