The secret to longevity in the music business is to change, and to be able to change. [...] An actor has to assume other people's identities. A rock star doesn't need to do that. [...] But change is important.

I lost my innocence with Johnny Cash. I used to watch the Johnny Cash Show on television in Wangaratta when I was about 9 or 10 years old. At that stage I had really no idea about rock'n'roll. I watched him and from that point I saw that music could be an evil thing, a beautiful, evil thing.

Songs need to have the ability to change and to grow for sure. They take on lives of their own. Some songs just don't have that capacity. They're locked within a period of time. And as soon as you take them out of that period of time, they die very quickly.

When I’m singing “Deanna,” for example, which I sing pretty much every night, it brings forward a kind of imagined, romanticized lie about this particular person, which I find really comforting and exciting to sing about.

And she moves among the sparrows. And she floats upon the breeze. She moves among the flowers. She moves something deep inside of me

The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song.

I see it as my duty in some way is to be out in the world as an Australian putting forward what I consider to be authentic Australian music.