
‘I looked at Patti Smith on the cover of her album Horses. There’s no makeup, no glam, no plastic surgery – she’s not a famous pop star with lots of money. And I thought, “That’s what I want to be”’
I’d been living in Edinburgh, on the dole, trying to make it as a musician. I was once so skint that I stole broccoli from a field. I moved down to London in 2000, having signed a record deal, but I was in that awful situation where the label was saying: “We need singles.”