If you wanted to chart new territories and head off over the horizon, you had to make sure you weren't overly influenced by what others were doing ... so it didn't matter what other bands were doing ... we did what we were doing.

I always felt if we were going in to do an album, there should already be a lot of structure already made up so we could get on with that and see what else happened.

So far I've been very, very fortunate because it appears that people like to hear the music I like to play. What more fortunate position can a musician be in?

From the classical guitar right through to the furthest electrical experiments and everything in-between, it's amazing what the guitar can actually do. I mean, when one thinks about sounds.

Domesticity and all that isn't really for me.

Seeing people's faces, really getting off on them, makes me incredibly happy. Genuinely.

That's the music that I play at home all the time, Joni Mitchell. Court and Spark I love because I'd always hoped that she'd work with a band. But the main thing with Joni is that she's able to look at something that's happened to her, draw back and crystallize the whole situation, then write about it. She brings tears to my eyes, what more can I say? It's bloody eerie. I can relate so much to what she says. "Now old friends are acting strange/They shake their heads/They say I've changed."