It's been very hard for the guitar as a serious synthesizer to compete with keyboards.

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.

I've got four or five records in my head at a time that I try to work on and I would like to do a guitar trio record next - since The Police I've mostly made records with keyboards.

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

I spend a lot of time working as a painter and in my studio I go from upstairs where I paint to downstairs where I play and record, so I get this thing crossing over.

You don't want to be so far off the planet that you come out with something that doesn't make sense to anybody.

Sometimes, literally within a few minutes, you'd be off this amazing roaring scene and back at your hotel room, staring at the patten of the wallpaper. It's very surreal. You're back in your room, and it's dead quiet and really weird.