I understood jazz, I understood how it worked. That's what I apply to everything.

I find it extremely difficult talking about my songs because there's so many different things that can make a song come together.

There's no man alive who has any answers. We all know that. It's like the guru trip. All a guru can do is direct you to something that you probably already know about yourself, something you might want to followup on. Apply the same thing to music and records. You might get something from a particular record that hits a nerve and something inside you. But that's your vision of it.

Let me purify my thoughts and words and deeds that I may be a vehicle for thee.

I'd been performing in bands since I was 12 which represented, at that point, about 16 years of playing music.

If you get into introspective blues or something where you're stretching out a bit, large audiences don't respond to this, so you have to give them what they want, basically.

I didn't know what some of the stuff on Astral Weeks was about until years later.