The point of being in a band, for instance, isn't to get big; it's about enjoying playing shows.

I would never talk to a girl in a bar, like a pick-up thing. But I could talk to anyone if they wore a t-shirt of a band I like.

The point of being in a band, for instance, isn't to get big; it's about enjoying playing shows.

You are hearing this song, and you're 16, and it's a song about love, or a girl. And then maybe there's a girl at school that you like. So you're going to be thinking about that girl. That song is sort of about that girl. The songwriter doesn't know that girl, obviously. He wrote it for something else. But there's the specific meaning with the universal again.

One of the things is my process requires a lot of repetition. I can probably drive people crazy because I'm interested in playing a song twenty times in a row.

People think of songwriting as a very personal thing: A guy gets up there with an acoustic guitar and he sings his heart out, bares his soul.

There's somewhat of a real fascination with American bands and American mythology in London, so I think we've tapped into some of that. Maybe because of the way the press works or whatever, they have extremely knowledgeable music fans over there. People who will sit there and talk to you about some record that came out in 1967 out of Memphis that you've never heard before.