Reign of blows cascading down upon your shoulders Far too many men dressed up as soldiers The lamb is brought to the ground Under the weight of the Crown A crown of thorns and dark deeds The swastika and the hammer and sickle Are symbols that reap only weeds

Now that I'm out and I'm shouting in doorways Freed from a love more like murder I should be singing but in liberation Feel like a ship with no rudder.

You watch the country-music awards that they show on the television, and you see country music has reached about 1985. It's all huge processed drum sounds and chiming chorus guitars and programmed synths bobbling along in the background.

Will you tell them about that far off and mythical land And how a child to the virgin came? Will you tell them that the reason why we murdered Everything upon the surface of the world Is so we can stand right up and say we did it in his name?

It's sort of what jazz would be if it stopped being snobby and what rock would be if it stopped being stupid.

You know, I was such a big Beatles fan, and when I'd buy a new album I'd invariably hate it the first time I heard it 'cause it was a mixture of absolute joy and absolute frustration. I couldn't grasp what they'd done, and I'd hate myself for that.

Where I've arrived now is the product of mixing the very straight with the very exploratory; there's a fine line between the two, although it tends to be getting straighter and straighter because my songwriting is getting better.