From my point of view I would ban religion completely, even though there are some wonderful things about it. I love the idea of the teachings of Jesus Christ and the beautiful stories about it, which I loved in Sunday school and I collected all the little stickers and put them in my book. But the reality is that organised religion doesn't seem to work. It turns people into hateful lemmings and it's not really compassionate.
The world is near escalating to World War Three and where are the leaders of each religion? Why aren't they having a conclave; why aren't they coming together? I said this after 9/11 and people thought I was nuts: instead of more violence why isn't there a [meeting of religious leaders]. It's all got to be dialogue - that's the only way. Get everybody from each religion together and say 'Listen, this can't go on. Why do we have all this hatred?'
We are all God's people; we have to get along and the [religious leaders] have to lead the way. If they don't do it, who else is going to do it? They're not going to do it and it's left to musicians or to someone else to deal with it. It's like the peace movement in the Sixties - musicians got through [to people] by getting out there and doing peace concerts but we don't seem to do them any more. We seem to be doing fundraisers for Africa and everything like that but I think peace is really important. If John Lennon were alive today he'd be leading it with a vengeance.
ON PROTEST:People don't seem to protest in the streets any more, they are always blogging on the internet. They seem to do their protesting online, and that's not good [enough]. You have got to get out there and be seen and be vocal, and you've got to do it time and time again. People have become apathetic. There was a big march in London when Britain decided to join the war against Iraq and Tony Blair is on record as saying 'The people who march today will have blood on their hands.' That's returned to bite him in the ass.
We cannot solve everybody's fucking problems in the West. What we've done [in Iraq] has sped up an inevitable civil war after Saddam Hussein left power. I don't know the solution. I just know that all we can do as musicians - whether gay or straight - is to come together and promote peace. We have been promoting [anti-poverty] but when you do a concert sometimes they forget about their emotions: that's the power of music and sport - they are the two things that can do that.
From a post on Marxmail.org
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