It's sort of a feeling of power onstage. It's really the ability to make people smile, or just to turn them one way or another for that duration of time, and for it to have some effect later on. I don't really think it's power... it's the goodness.

There's so many parts of your life, you know? People say that you don't get any better after the age of about forty or something like that, as a performer. I find all that to be a misconception. I don't feel bad about the way I present stuff. The calendar and the mirror - they're bastards.

I was competing for attention in a four-piece band that was phenomenal, and I was trying to attack the blues from a kind of white English viewpoint as a singer.

My vocal style I haven't tried to copy from anyone. It just developed until it became the girlish whine it is today.

It's crucial that I kind of keep up, without drifting into the backslapping land of cliche and lifetime achievement awards.

There's a similarity between European and North African folk musics.

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.