Sometimes language is not enough.

Going to the Sahara Desert and meeting the Touareg band Tinariwen was a life-changing experience. All through that time, I have just carried on learning and meeting musicians, and I keep finding links between different forms.

I do understand the perspective of die-hard fans who complain that we don't play the same as the record, but at the same time I think fans are getting an amazing deal.

In Western classical music the idea of holiness, purity, perfection, and total beauty is expressed through clarity of sound - a bell-like sound. Obviously, that has its own place, and it's a beautiful way of doing it. But I don't think I am the first to point out that in Africa, the more buzzing the sound is, the more it indicates the other world - the spirit world.

I am very sensitive to music, so I can quite easily allow myself to access that space in which I am completely taken over. And you can get quite a reaction out of the crowd when you do that.

There actually had been a tradition within English music of the '60s of people looking eastwards, maybe in quite a naïve way, but nonetheless, you had musicians like George Harrison or Bryan Jones recording the musicians of Joujouka in North Africa.

When I was growing up, my idea of Led Zeppelin was all epic lasers, castles, and ten-minute drum solos - that sort of thing.