I have always thought of myself as a performer first and way down the line as a recording artist.

When the audience is awful you can still have a great night and people will walk out thinking they had a great time even though there was loads of loudmouths and the sound was terrible.

The bulk of my set is instrumental and you have to give yourself and the audience some relief because a performance is not about great guitar playing it's really about entertainment.

I am evidence that you don't have to sell a lot of records or succeed in the usual way to have a big audience and a job.

I don't spend a lot of time thinking of what they'll do musically, I try to imagine being locked into a windowless room with this person for twelve hours at a time. If you can look at that and think it might be fun then maybe you've got the right musician.

It is not a mystical thing, however, it is obvious and practical and I think that what the performer does is to try to get to that point with every choice you make from the phrasing in a tune to the choice of tunes.

I was required by Capital to release one every six months and the fastest I could do with all my touring was every nine months, and it would spook me every time because I never had what I needed and I really didn't want to do covers.