You learn to read the audiences after a while, and there are all different kinds of gigs.

I went back to Belfast and started a club, the Maritime. No one had thought about doing a blues club, so I was the first.

Hearing the blues changed my life.

I don't like to wonder about it-I just like to do it. That's what I mean about the image stuff and all that. There's far too much emphasis being placed on that kind of stuff... the whole emphasis on what does it mean? Everybody has their own particular vision.

The first piece of music that captured my imagination was probably Ray Charles Live At Newport.

Any artist is an instrument-and that's exactly why you can't do it all the time. You can only do it when it's happening, when it's coming through. No matter how much you may want to do it, if it's not happening then it's simply not happening.

It's the emotion...each word has got a connotation and symbolism and the thing is finding what's behind the word-what meaning it has and what emotion. I'm really into vocal repetition as a definite art form.