The big cop-out would be to accept popularity rather than opting to try to create potent work. It's so easy to do the popular thing, the expected thing, and that's where you start to cheat yourself - and your fans, in the end - because there's an inherent dishonesty in pandering and dishing up what everyone's expecting.

Every album is difficult. If it was easy, we'd make one a month.

Clarity of vision - what you've been looking at from the wrong angle and not seen at all.

I'm a minimalist at heart. If a song doesn't need a solo, I'm not going to force one into it.

Rock and roll isn't a career or hobby - it's a life force ... it's just something I have to do.

A trumpet sounds pretty much like a trumpet, and that's true of a lot instruments; pianos sound like pianos, but there's something about the guitar - the range of possibilities is much broader.

If there is a perfect book to start the year with it has to be Rebecca Mead's My Life in Middlemarch.