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" A lot of people are surprised by my love of heavy metal. I fell in love with heavy metal almost before any other genre. One of the first concerts I went to was a Donnington Monsters Of Rock concert. "

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" I've got no problem whatsover with collar bars coming back in. I need to look a tiny bit older before I can dress like that the entire time - otherwise I'm going to look like I'm in 'Bugsy Malone.' "

Jamie Cullum

Back

Look

Time

" My maternal granddad, Leonard, was full of amazing stories. He was an orphan, with 11 or 12 brothers and sisters, and he used to tell us about growing up near the Irrawaddy river and how one brother was eaten by a crocodile. "

Jamie Cullum

Growing Up

Brother

" 'Cullum' is Scottish, but I'm nowhere near Scottish. My mother is Burmese, and my father is of German, Jewish, English ancestry. "

" I don't think I've ever been true to jazz. There's always a kind of jazz element to what I do. There are a very few genres that I haven't tried out, really, in what I've been doing. As a jazz musician, you can kind of mess about with things with a certain level of musicianship, which helps. "

" You're only famous in the eyes of others. Inside, you're still the same, and not a hundred million records or TV shows can change that. I think the only pitfall of fame is believing that it means something, and behaving like that. "

" My pure love is playing music. "

" Most people in the U.K. discovered me playing a standard on Parkinson. In America, it was on VH1 singing an original called 'All At Sea,' which is a contemporary pop song. So the people that know me there tend to think of me in the singer/songwriter category. "

Jamie Cullum

Sea

People

" I've worn some particularly baggy jeans and cowboys boot combinations after coming back from Austin, Texas. This was ill-advised. "

" Now I have other demands on my time that are not flexible, I just can't wander into the studio at 2 A.M. like I used to. If I have an idea in the middle of the night, I will go and get the bare bones down, but mostly you can learn to tame it to your needs. "

" Oh, I was a real Nirvana kid. I got into jazz because I listened to a lot of metal, Megadeth and that, and those guys play really fast and are virtuosos. I wanted to learn more about it, and I discovered that a lot of jazz guys played really fast, too. "

" People often say that having a family makes you make safer choices. It's been the total opposite for me. It's really made me want to make bolder choices. "

Jamie Cullum

You

People

" I love traditional shoes. I have a nice couple of pairs of traditional Oxford-style shoes, a pair of Edward Green shoes, and I aspire to a pair of hand-made George Cleverley shoes. Mark McNairy, all those are amazing. "

" 'm really proud of 'Sad, Sad World' because it manages to state a very complex paradox of an emotion that I experienced when I had children, which is this great happiness and this great intensity, but with that intensity comes a deeper understanding of the world. "

" What's interesting is often people think life changes when you have a record deal and you do all kinds of stuff. Obviously your life changes, but nothing changes your life like getting married and having kids. "

" I sit around for ages waiting for inspiration. Then when I get an idea, I want to go with it and get something as quickly as possible. It's like catching a fly in a bottle. I'll play with drums for a bit, then the piano for a bit, play the guitar. "

" My only ambition is to grow as a musician. "

" The first suit I enjoyed was a Dior suit that I got given. I've never worn anything that fitted that closely - it was akin to 'Oh my God, I had no idea that a suit didn't have to be this wide.' But I do intend to get one made some day. "

" It's a blessing and a curse when your first big public album does so well. 'Twentysomething' sold four million copies - I think we were hoping to sell 80,000. And it's still selling. In some ways, you'll always be defined by that. "

" I can't get enough of this guy called Baths. He's a total L.A. dude and really young as well. It's super-electronic, but with almost Hall & Oates-style songwriting. Without the context of the production, it could be super-cheesy, but it has amazing harmonies. "

" The last time I went to a festival without a hat, two things happened. One: I got sunstroke. Secondly, I had to buy what can only be described as a Jamiroquai hat, which was sartorially incorrect - I'm saying that as a Jamiroquai fan. That was a disaster. I looked like a small clown. "

" I think you realise how terrifying and scary the world is when you're bringing kids into it. "

" I was an absolute idiot, wearing polo-necks, reading Kerouac, watching Woody Allen movies, and jazz fitted right into all of that. My interest in that whole world became very genuine, but perhaps started off a bit affected - a mixture of right and wrong reasons. I was always drawn to non-commercial music, perhaps pathologically so. "

" I tried to sing 'What's Going On' with Amy Winehouse once at an old cinema in the West End. There was a funk band that had members of both of our bands playing in it, but it was the worst kind of place to sing bad karaoke because everyone there was an amazing singer or musician. "

" I lived my twenties on the road, in all different countries experiencing this momentum of a career which was taking off in its own way. "