I think people who basically do one thing like Eric Clapton is great. But I've always enjoyed playing different kinds of music and playing with different kinds of musicians because I find that really interesting, like learning and working with Kip Hanrahan. There's a great conga player called Milton Cardona and he taught me a lot of the nuances, he's a Santeria Priest and so he knows his onions as it were.

I played upright bass. I wanted to write great tunes, play the bass, be a band leader, and smoke a big funny pipe like Charlie Mingus. So I went out and bought the pipe when I was around 18 or 19 years old. You know even women smoke a pipe in Glasgow. I worked with Carla Bley and she smoked a pipe, which I find fascinating.

I was a big fan of Gary Moore, he was my buddy and I miss him a lot. I loved his playing because you've got that passion; it was sort of a Celtic thing. The Irish and Scots they just go for it and not too worried about looking good. When I was in the states touring, I landed in Seattle to do a gig and one of the fans came to me and told me about Gary's death. It was very hard for me to carry on, it was awful.

I'm no politician but I do feel that a lot of damage was done because of misguided principals and America is still suffering from it.

Well all the big companies are really panicked by the internet thing and all that, and sales went down, although sales have gone up again in this country a bit and also the big companies, because they're so big, they need big sales really so they're not really interested.

I listen to a lot of different kinds of music and rather than just doing one thing when I make an album, the challenge to myself is to write all these diverse tracks, but to make them work. It's like a jigsaw because if you've got a lyrical track going into a hard rock track... it's got to work. You've got to write things that will work together.

If you haven't got a sense of humor you're making your life a hundred times harder. It doesn't matter what happens to you, if you can have a laugh about it, and don't take yourself so serious, you have the battles halfway won.