I had lots of friends who were fighting in Vietnam and I am still friends with veterans of the war.

I love jazz. I still do. Dave Brubeck and Stan Getz are so good. I took a notification course in Jazz Orchestration. It wasn't a grandiose as you'd think but I did have to to go to Los Angeles to do it and get an understanding of the keyboard because the keyboard became my tool and I used it a lot in transposing and composing. All the flats and time values. I spent a year doing that because in those days you had to be able to write your own music and read sheets.

I worked in a plant when I was 14 for two years. I always wanted to do the summer jobs. Honest to God, I always had to be doing something.

Of course I knew The Band's Canadian keyboard player, the late Richard Manuel, but I didn't play that night because I was there as a guest with my record executives. People ask, "why didn't you play?" If I had known I was going to be playing then I would have been prepared for it.

I would never have ever dreamed that I would get married again and then all of a sudden you meet somebody. That's the thing about life. It can be so unexpected.

What has changed for me is that I now have a huge family [Lightfoot has four children, from his first two marriages] - the result of my living.

I was happy to be in England, because my mother had always loved the royals, and so do I.