I'm not that type of musician where I can sit down at the piano and work out a song; I actually really enjoy that process of sitting with somebody and having nothing and then suddenly something starts appearing. You struggle with it, and then suddenly a song starts to appear. Then, you've got to try and muscle it - there's that word again - into something and you do. You tussle with it and play with it and roll around with it and suddenly, magically, something appears.

You have a tendency to just remember the bad times and bad moments. I think that often it's the way of life. Yet the rewards we got from it were fantastic and we played a lot of shows to sellout audiences in I don't know how many cities. I just think we didn't realise how insane it was until we were actually right in the middle of it and couldn't stop. We just couldn't stop.

Vocally, I really like going into the darker side of myself.

I have to feel the audience. I enjoy that feeling of community.

Really, what I'm always drawn to is the voice - PJ Harvey , Björk . If the voice interests me, then I'm interested to listen to what's happening.

There's always this weird dark humor within a lot of Depeche Mode songs that people miss, tongue-in-cheek and also very British.

Joy comes from places you least expect it. Its usually the simple things, like watching my son play basketball or going through Central Park when the blossoms are blooming.