The old ways still apply. You can still send tapes to record companies, and there are record companies, you know, there are one or two of the record companies do declare proudly that they listen to every single one that comes.

I don't have a very disciplined approach to practicing or anything, but I do tend to have a guitar around most of the time, which I strum on most of the day.

I haven't watched it [the film 'Pink Floyd at Pompeii'] in years. I find it excruciating.

I think a lot of things do influence me, but the influence mechanism is as such that these things dive into your brain and bury themselves into your subconscious and you're never quite sure where and how they're going to emerge. I don't think I really take direct influence.

I don't know what you wanna describe as Rock 'n' Roll, but I certainly thought that 60s stuff, Bob Dylan and the Beatles, changed the world a little bit. But the effect seems to have retreated. I think it's harder than we think to change the world. These things go in cycles. It doesn't seem to have done an awful lot of good, does it? You know, all the talk of racial harmony and equality in the world... we haven't got a long way since the 60s.

Obviously record companies tend to be following what the scene is rather than making the scene.

I'm English and I am British. I don't know if I feel part of a music scene. Musically, I have as many feelings and affinity with Americans or Canadians, or all sorts of people as I do with English people.