There was a time when fast playing and fretboard pyrotechnics on the bass were important to me and when I am recording a bass track, that is still very important to me.

Back in the day, fans wrote letters to groups - you'd get them, although it could take a while. Now, artists can go online and there's discussions about what you should and shouldn't be doing. The minute you announce that you're recording an album, thousands of people are telling you what that album should be.

It's hard for me to just practice without writing something.

For me, how I feel about what I wrote down turns into a song.

Then, once I have lyrics, being able to shape them around a song is nothing new for me, I've been doing that for 25 years. The soul searching part of it, the spontaneous part of it, that was, and remains, a really terrific process.

I feel safe and comfortable to do that once I know that the song structure around the bass part is very interesting and it satisfies me in a compositional sense.

I love to write. It's my first love.