How much do people really want to learn? I mean, some people get into a groove and they stay with it indefinitely. And what starts off as a great moment of explosive passion can end up as cabaret 25, 30 years later. It just depends on whether you go and find the right habitat to extend yourself.

I've stopped apologizing to myself for having this great period of success and financial acceptance.

Finding another way to do what I know I can do pretty well. A way that stimulates me. I'm always on some sort of learning curve. If I can continually be surprised then I'm alert.

There's no comparison between the most precious parts of one's personal life and success and wealth. If you lost someone near and dear to you, you can't relate it to any amount of fame, fortune and luxury. You just have to go on living.

Since I was a kid, I've had an absolute obsession with particular kinds of American music. Mississippi Delta blues of the Thirties, Chicago blues of the Fifties, West Coast music of the mid-Sixties - but I'd never really touched on dark Americana.

I've lived a life which has been pretty much full up with ambition, ideas, stimulus, creativity, some negativity which I try and avoid.

Austin - it's a stimulating center. In this conversation, the very first two questions were talking about my kind of wanderlust and my adventures. Some people at my time in life travel forever. I don't know whether it's the British or the Australians - whoever it is, you can kind of stagger into some sort of far-off bastion in the middle of nowhere, and you'll find someone from Britain or someone from Australia or maybe an American.