Drummers get bored. You tell them to play something simple, and it gets more complicated as they do it. If they're not a composer, if they don't have any kind of investment in the music, they'll just add a bit there and another bit there, and you think no! Don't do that. So you end up using a drum machine.

I know it shouldn't make a difference, but crossing the dateline, we weren't sure what day it was - it was very strange. Now, I seem to cope with it better.

Many people think of me as a perfectionist, someone who polishes and shines each song and performance. I've always been bothered by that assumption.

Take a look at me now, cause there's just an empty space. And you coming back to me is against all odds and that's what I've got to face.

I don't want to preach, but I really think the rudiments are very important to developing your drumming skills. Many of the patterns I've recorded came from things like paradiddles, flam paradiddles, flam triplets... They might be boring to sit down and practice, but not when you apply them to the drums.

'Urban Renewal' was sweet because I've been - unfairly, I would say - plonked in the middle of the road because of a handful of songs. It came at a good time for me, because you do take a bit of a browbeating and, as you get older, you become better at accepting it and realizing why it happens.

I've spent the last year and a half going through a very public separation, hiding in hotel lobbies.