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.

My wife is very happy about me keeping all my music in my pocket.

At forty-one, now I think it would be really cool to have an A&R guy say, "You know what? I don't think you've got this album sequenced right."

I really want to write a novel. A few years ago I went so far as to do the cliché thing and rent this house in upstate [New York]. I still have the story, but I got 15,000, 20,000 words in and it was like, This is falling apart. I can't figure out.

There's somewhat of a real fascination with American bands and American mythology in London.

I think you want to write a song that's like the songs you are into.

I think the other thing that shaped me a little bit is that I really didn't have any success in music until my early to mid-30s.