John Lennon, Julian & Yoko Ono - Robert Bassanini, Julian & Cynthia Lennon

You are - also part of your strategy -  in every country, signed on different companies with your new album. For what reasons did you make a contract with "Rough Trade Records" which is meant to be an independent company.

"That's a question on which you could give ten answers. The fact is I swore to myself after the last album that I would never work with famous companies again. So I decided to work independently in future. I set up my own label,  to underline that I mean it serious with my new start and my self-control, I called the label "Music From Another Room". Till this time the public never had the chance to hear me as I wanted to be heard; the control through my managers and producer made me a marionette. I trusted them too much. So the German establishment  Rough Trade fits very much into my master plan. I've only heard good things about this company."

So your motto is ' learning by doing'?

"Exactly! Because 50% of your deals with managers and record companies are handled like the motto ' let's see, maybe, it could be', I thought ' okay, let's see, it really could be'. Besides that I've been in the business for 15 years now, I have seen what has happened with some 'promising' colleagues."

Every normal person would ask the same question at the sight of your enormous heritage: Why the hell is he still working? Even if music is his subject, so he, as a multi-millionaire, has to fight with the critics, answer to silly questions, escape from fans who go mad or give autographs. Why doesn't he buy himself a villa in the Caribbean and just bask in the sun on the beach?

"(Laughs) For me it isn't just the search for self- confirmation. Look, I've wrote songs for years now, I love writing songs, and that's why I see my part as a musician more like a personal challenge: I want to figure out what's still in me, what else am I able to do. For me there is nothing more exciting than to take up a challenge. And since I know that a lot of people have liked the work I have done so far, yet I found myself wrongly interpreted - bingo, new start, new team."

You didn't have a personal manager over the last years ?

"I had, unfortunately, and that became one of the important aspects of my later enlightenment: in this business you better not trust anybody blindly. I had two or three managers. One of them worked for Phil Collins and Genesis as well. Now I know that nobody with such a full plate could become my Brian Epstein. Okay, for Collins he probably does a great job, but I rank under 'and also ran'. Of course, my own stupidity was implicated in that, too: to believe that these people know a hundred percent what they were doing. So, this time, if anything goes wrong, only one person is responsible for that: me !"

© 1998 Rolling Stone Magazine