Music is for every single person that walks the planet.

You have to ask these questions: who pays the piper, and what is valuable in this life?

I put a lot of work into my lyrics. Not all my stuff is meant to be scrutinized, though.

You would find in a lot of Zep stuff that the riff was the juggernaut that careered through and I worked the lyrics around this.

It's amazing, it's pumping, it's furious, it's anxious, it's happy and it's far more real than anything you'll ever experience in a Western city. Morocco is a living, pulsating entity which is rapidly changing all the time but there are parts of Marrakesh that carry on as they have done for a thousands years. The music is a reflection of that, of all times and all religions and of all the natural expectations and conditions of the people who live there.

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 haven't lost my innocence particularly. I'm always ready to pretend I haven't. Yeah, it is a shame in a way.