Part of the reason I'm doing Us + Them tour is to play my part in trying to spread the message that cooperation is a better way to resolve conflicts than confrontation. That bridges are better than walls, that nationalism and exceptionalism is destroying our world and destroying our lives.

There is a magic in some books / That sucks a man into connections / With the spirits hard to touch / That join him to his kind.

By the cold and religious we were taken in hand - shown how to feel good; and told to feel bad.

What it comes down to for me is this: Will the technologies of communication in our culture, serve to enlighten us and help us to understand one another better, or will they deceive us and keep us apart?

And who knows which is which and who is who.

We are all brothers and sisters under the skin and above it . . . it's super important that we stop lobbing bombs over the top of the wall and start trying to dismantle it, so that we can say 'hi' to whoever is on the other side, whether the divide is religious or nationalistic or politic or economic.

That one record changed everything for me. After Sgt. Pepper, it's the most influential record in the history of rock and roll. It affected Pink Floyd deeply, deeply, deeply. Philosophically, other albums may have been more important, like Lennon's first solo album. But sonically, the way the record's constructed, I think Music from Big Pink is fundamental to everything that happened after it.