I took the name originally as a kind of disguise because I didn't want people to know I was about to embark on a s****y musical career that would last five months. And a lot of people took funny names back then.

Novels may have taken care of the emotional business for me, which has allowed music to be more emotional for me.

If they'd said, "Do you want to be John Wesley Harding or Wesley Stace in 25 years' time?" I would have said Wesley Stace, but I wasn't to know.

When I was writing this new bunch of songs, I was singing a lot lower, because they were more intimate in a way. I had to come up with a way to frame the music that was intimate.

There's nothing I like more than a writer who can sing, or a musician who has a book out.

With me more than anybody it seems silly having a stage name, and there wasn't any particular difference between me and John Wesley Harding. There wasn't any need to draw that line. I just happened to draw it.

The reason I did the name change is simple. I wrote a bunch of autobiographical material and I was really enjoying myself doing it, and in two of the songs I quote two different people (referring to me as Mr. Stace). And it just hit me at some point that it was ludicrous for me to think of myself as Wesley Stace, publish novels as Wesley Stace, be Wesley Stace and not have it released as Wesley Stace.