David Bowie used to come to our show when he was David Jones. He'd bring his band, the Spiders from Mars, and say "watch this". Everybody pushed everybody which was good. People wanted there to be an animosity between Bowie and I, but there never was. He created characters, I created Alice, and we both wrote from our character's point of view. We had dinner two or three times. I think there was a nice artistic push - when we heard each other's albums we went "Oh, I see where you're doing with this". Rock is the most theatrical music in the world, so why not bring it alive on stage.

For me, all of my big brothers and sisters were characters that were bigger than life. Hendrix, Joplin ... they died young. Because they tried to be their character off stage. I realised I couldn't be Alice all the time because he was too theatrical. Pretty soon your character will kill you. I didn't want to go out on the street with a snake around my neck! That character doesn't belong in a bank! They only belong on stage. I didn't want him to be in daily life. As soon as the curtain came down, I wasn't him anymore.

Even to this day I can co-exist with Alice. I can play him onstage. I look forward to playing Alice, I can't wait. But I know that pretty soon I will be off stage too. He never talks to the audience if you notice - that would make him more human. He's an arrogant villain. I leave him where he belongs.

There were two Alices - the Alice when I was drinking, who was society's whipping boy. He represented all the disenfranchised. The artistic kids, the gay kids, the kids who were too weird to be with other kids. They all flocked to Alice. Because he was the outsider, and got hung, and beheaded. When I got sober I realised that Alice was gone. This new Alice was going to be an arrogant villain. And he would look down on the audience, and have total control over the audience. That's the way people love to see him now - he comes out mad and angry and dangerous. But I like him being vulnerable to silliness too. If you don't have humour and horror together, you're missing out on stuff.

I never had a drummer ever ask me to see the lyrics before. It's just something drummers don't do. He says - I interpret the lyrics, I don't just work on the bottom of the song. I thought that was a great idea. A lot of the time he doesn't do what a normal drummer would do. He doesn't do snare, hi-hat, but he goes snare, tom tom and instead of this "chk" it had a "boom" and turned the song into something else. Working with a drummer who was artistically involved in the lyrics of the song was really cool, and it gave the album a whole different flavour. The fact he worked on this album, all the way through it, totally changed the face of it. It was really fun working with him. He had fun listening, because the songs go all over the place, and he somehow glued it all together.

I never was much of a practical joker but we used to play a game called Bang You're Dead on the Nightmare tour. Everybody made a pact that if someone said "Bang you're dead" you had to die right there - you could die three times a day. Someone might be carrying a plate of food in a Chinese restaurant and someone else would say "bang!" They'd have to fall down with food everywhere. If you didn't do it .. oh you'd be ridiculed. And the shame would be too great. You had to make it theatrical too. The bigger the death the better - I remember falling into a pool and just floating there. But - there was glory in how good your death was. If you died a glorious death it was applauded. Looked upon as "well done, well played".

The longevity of it, really. None of us thought we'd get past 30 years old and here I am 70, I'll be 70 next year. Not Paul McCartney, Pete Townshend, Mick Jagger, yet here we are. I think there was a different work ethic from that era. Nobody ever thought of retirement. But we didn't expect to be doing this now. We were all kids at the time, and indestructible. We proved that you could live on beer and that beer was a food group. I don't remember eating. Nowadays it's different. Three generations of a family now can come to see us - it still speaks to the old guy, the middle guy and the teenager.

Sitting in the roost of the Hollywood Vampire they gave us this balcony. We would all sit there, the last to show up would be Keith Moon, and we would wait to see what he would wear that night. One night he showed up as the Queen of England, but fully, the whole thing. One night he was Hitler with a motorcycle and a sidecar. He was a French maid one time - full, with the duster. He'd go "Hello boys, what are we drinking?" And we'd have to be like "Well, that's who he is tonight". Everybody loved him he was so much fun. But he was exhausting. He was like a little kid. He was always up, everybody's best friend, and the sweetest guy in the world.

Keith Moon on drums. Jeff Beck on guitar. Pete Townshend on guitar. Paul McCartney on bass. And then John Lennon on a third guitar! Lennon and McCartney singing together, that's your whole background.

I was invited to Augusta three times. The first time there was a flood. The second a tornado. The third a deluge of rain. So I'm supposed to play in October, I would love to play it. My favourite? In England it's Sunningdale. My favourite is Makena. It's so private - you don't have to wear shoes or a shirt. You can play in your bathing suit. It's as close to playing in paradise as you can ever imagine. Golf is my favourite addiction. It's the crack of sports. It's absolutely addictive. I play six days a week for the last 35 years. I'm on the tee at 6.30am every day. The only time I don't play is doing press junkets like this. My handicap is four.

Frank ... we were the only band that would fit on his label Bizarre Records. The great compliment I got from Frank was "I don't get what you're doing!" He listened to the songs and said "I don't get it ... it's great! They're two minutes long with 35 changes in them. And they go nowhere!" The idea that Frank Zappa didn't get us was great.

First of all I haven't spent anything on makeup because Mac takes care of all of our makeup - which is great. You have to have this Mac makeup remover, these pads to get it off. I try not to get all of it off, because it looks great the next day to have a little bit left the next day. A bit more rock'n'roll.