I do think there are deep structural things that are wrong in the world.

It just doesnt mean anything to me, the high-profile, big money side of things. I just want enough to live on, and to be able to get on with what I do, and hang around my friends.

Because of my politics, people think I'm anti-American. But I was quite the reverse. What I don't like about the United States is when the government acts like an old, imperial 18th- or 19th-century European power.

In fact, when the fires of empire get hidden, they still stay burning underneath the moss, seething away. This is true with a lot of the countries with really difficult, impenetrable nationalist movements - countries that once had a big empire, like Turkey, England, or even in Italy, with the fascists in the middle of the last century. People who had empires, unfortunately, want them back eventually, somehow, someway.

The most effective instruments do have a vocal quality.

Even if you're specific about the character of the song, it's more exciting to place them, juxtapose them in such a way as to make an adventure out of the sequence of the songs.

I'm just a very primitive, infantile folk singer.