[FONT=Verdana, Arial] "I had no place in a future that this past was determining. I wanted to be part of another world, a world where everything was always about the present. I didn't want to be part of that country where to be ambitious was to be mocked at."[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial] He wanted to get out, to be "anywhere but here" as he felt claustrophobic in the "stale air created by the church state" which bred corruption.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial] He also spoke about the "hopelessness of Dublin" at the time.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial] When his band, the Boomtown Rats, talked about this, they were vilified and were banned from playing in "our own country", he said.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial] "My Irishness was an impediment to me, to be honest with you, because it came with an entire baggage of assumptions that I didn't hold to be true.[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial] "I didn't view this past as being a big part of my culture, this imposed culture that I had to be part of. I felt I had to be almost Stalinistic and had to deny my Irish past in order to become part of this other world."[/FONT]
[FONT=Verdana, Arial] Even when he moved to England, he suffered because of his Irishness as the band was "kept out of the club" and everything they did was seen in an Irish context.[/FONT]