You absorb so much from whatever your environment is, as an artist, and you learn to take from it what can help you create.

My vocation is more in composition really than anything else - building up harmonies using the guitar, orchestrating the guitar like an army, a guitar army.

I really wasn't needed... Just straightening up riffs, that's all. Just two guitarists doing it instead of one.

There are very few people I can call real, close friends. They're very, very precious to me.

We were never a band that did 96 takes of the same thing. I had heard of groups that were into that kind of excess around that time. They'd work on the same track for three or four days and then work on it some more, but that's clearly not the way to record an album. If the track isn't happening and it creates some sort of psychological barrier, even after an hour or two, then you should stop and do something else. Go out: go to the pub, or a restaurant or something. Or play another song.

You can't just find yourself doing something and not happy doing it.

Artists say that paintings are never done. I sort of feel the same way about music. I would never say something is perfect. There are performances that can generate a lot of emotion in me when I hear them, but I can't say if anything is perfect.