To go see a band in a big venue is a difficult experience. I don't really like that too much. I'm not a guy who puts on iTunes and goes, "Oh, what's hot!" I don't need to.

I like to play with someone who can cover a lot of ground and someone with whom you can discuss the language at a reasonable level; otherwise it gets a bit frustrating.

In The Police, in a trio situation - which I've come back to now - it's just so wide open that it does actually provide this arena where you can play with a certain freedom.

You come off of this screaming audience of many, many thousands of people. I used to find it very weird. You have two choices. Either you can stay and pump flesh with hundreds of people after the show, which really gets old, or you can come off stage, get into the car, and go straight out the back and away, back to the hotel.

Start with the titles, and then build the music that goes with them.

If I'm playing a violin thing, for instance, I tend to respond to that sound with the way I finger.

There was a period when I'd just come out of college where I'd been playing classical guitar and I suddenly realised that it wasn't what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.