Mary Of The Fourth Form from the first album is a jailbait Lolita song in the old bluesman mode, or maybe a brattier version of Cypress Avenue by Van. One wonders if a 27-year old would get away with singing about a schoolgirl these days

I wouldve been 24, 25, when I wrote that, but it was a sort of the whole thing is a Van Morrison Gloria thing meets John Lee Hooker, but it was about someone specific. It was about this girl and she was gorgeous and I wanted her and you extrapolate out from that. Would you get away with that now? No, but would John Lee Hooker or Muddy Waters get away with Im A Man, coming out as a serious artist and singing those things as your debut? Would a 27 year old get away with writing Teenage Kicks? No. So they are of their moment in time.

The street trilogy of Joeys On The Street Again, Rat Trap and When The Night Comes spans the first three albums. It seems like the guy in those songs was trying to escape from a stifling domestic environment, which is an interesting contrast with your current status as the head of a family of girls.

Those songs are about getting out; theyre not about getting out of family. It wasnt about how family life was curtailing because I didnt know family life. My family life didnt exist because of conditions in our house (the death of Bobs mother at a young age), so I never wrote paean to the family, and thats probably why, subsequently, now I do have family, I see how it works and how it can be of benefit rather than a constraint. And anyway, youd want to be a ****ing idiot if you didnt think family is a basic block you can use as your launch platform in effect.

So you dont hold with Larkins famous line and the cult of the dysfunctional family?

They do **** you up, your Mum and Dad, but thats the function of family perhaps. The point about being a parent is to say, These are the values you should have. The point about being a teenager is kicking against those and saying, I dont agree and finding your way from those values. The failure of the Mum and Dad is either insisting on their values being inculcated in the kid and making them conform on the one hand, or alternatively having no values at all that are instructive.

Was it difficult for your girls to go through a natural period of rebellion given that you dont seem to fit either category?

I dont think the question applies to be honest because our family life has been so ****ing dramatic, if not tragic, that would be more the question youd have to ask. I give them plenty to kick against me. Ill do the whole thing about, Body piercings and studs are so naff and vulgar, and theyll say, God youre so lame and, You havent a clue and all that sort of stuff.

The problem with music is its a hard one for them, because generally Ill listen to anything and say, Thats not bad whats that? One of them likes The Strokes, The Thrills, The White Stripes, The Pistols, The Ramones, The Kinks, The Who, so she gets the linear line. The other one is far more broad church, so itll be Eminem and Britney, both of whom shes obsessed with. The eldest one would be of her generation I guess, Nirvana, a lot of hip-hop, Counting Crows, either the song end of stuff or hip-hop. And the little one just likes any old bollocks.

As is her prerogative, being the youngest.

Yeah!(laughs)

The Fine Art Of Surfacing album was The Rats commercial if not artistic peak, but a lot of the songs suggest you werent in the healthiest state of mind at the time. Someones Looking At You in particular seems to address a person wrestling with some sort of paranoid neurosis.

By The Fine Art Of Surfacing it was very heady heights. We were a massive ****ing band; I mean people kind of forget that. There were hits ****ing everywhere save America, big gigs, big records and its getting to me a bit. And the template really is that song Wind Chill Factor.Its one of those days where I dont like myself / But I get along with me okay / Ill slip beneath these sheets and Ill shiver here a while / I find that happening more frequently these days.

Really Im very upfront about things throughout this. That was what was going on, and it was a feeling of isolation within the band because I was writing all the songs and Id no ****in wish to, because the strain was becoming really intense. I was keeping a big organisation going, I was keeping the guys and their dependents, the crew, their dependents, the office, big staff. But financially of course, youre better off, because youre writing the songs, so that does become an issue, even if its not articulated. And also I kept thinking, Where do we go from here?Every step, the next step is failure, and I was freaking out.

So Someones Looking At You, I was really doubting myself, the press were all saying, Hes a ****, the songs are ****ish, and yet we were all selling ****ing millions of records. Im really doubting anything I think or believe in, and that record is ****ing full of that. This art of surfacing, were up there but how do you stay afloat? In Fall Down (from Mondo Bongo) which is a song I like, it says, I might storm and rage and thunder / Oh Christ but then later in the incinerator / Something inside seems to fall asunder / I need to scream every now and again / Try to understand its only me / Not only cripples have a need for crutches / And if they ever take you away from me fall down. And thats Paula.

Its hard not to think of Paula when listening to Diamond Smiles, a Spector-esque lament for a party girl who commits suicide. It must be quite a painful song to revisit.

Was it you who said to me before that thats bizarrely prescient? Some journalist wrote that. And I really did get freaked out well not freaked out, but I just thought, ****in hell, because it is. And now when I ****in do it, thats all thats in my head. Yesterday doing interviews a guy brought it up and said, flatteringly, that probably his favourite couplet in rock isThe girl in the cake / Jumped out too soon by mistake. He was talking about Paula in that context. And possibly she was in my head as a model for the girl. The girl was real, it was just a tiny little story in the paper, but sad. But now revisiting it when I do it live cos that and the song Dave are the songs that are shouted out most frequently its really odd, even the little chorus, She did it with grace / She did it with style / She did it all before she died / I remember Diamond Smiles. Yeah, Im sad when I do it.

With a gun to your head, whats your favourite Rats record?

V Deep is the one that I love. Really in the end I just think, heres a band who know that the public wont accept them as The Boomtown Rats anymore. But nonetheless, the song He Watches It All, when I heard that I thought, Thats ****in cool. And Never In A Million Years is that scream of **** you. It marks its moment very well. Im really astounded by the songs complexity and the ability of these guys to play. The guys in the Rats played their ****in arses off. A lot of it was boredom. Once youve done I Dont Like Mondays Oh thats whats a hit, is it? Okay, I can write ****in piano tunes 'til theyre comin out my hole. But The Rats didnt like anything that sounded like what weve done before. I played the original version of Do They Know Its Christmas? to The Rats and they didnt really like it on the basis of wed done something like it before.

But obviously I love the first album, cos heres this bunch of kids when I listen to that I just think, There is nothing gonna stop those crowd of guys. Nothing.

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