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.

Im better for it and I prefer to keep things simple and see what sounds I can get out of my head and hands rather than relying on a sound that someone else created.

You're on the stage and you've got all those people yelling at you, so you better be right in the moment, reacting to that. It's completely live and organic. Even 20 years later, it's the same thing. You may be even better on your instrument. Hopefully, you are.

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.

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

I don't like playing standards. I like to do my own cutting edge work.

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.