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

I just need somewhere to dump all my negativity.

I'd come to the point where I wasn't really putting out creatively. I didn't seem to have anything to say in that period of time after the '74 tour. There was nothing definite that I wanted to record.

Joyous Sound evolved from a gospel influence. Actually it evolved out of sitting at a piano and just picking out a riff, a gospel type riff. It just seemed to come joyously-something about the song, about living in another place of joyous sounds. I'm not quite sure-that's one I'm trying to analyze. It just came out.

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.

We're [with Robbie Robertson ] jazz musicians. The context may be rock 'n' roll but it's still jazz. It's jazz and that means improvization...you play a tune the way it feels and you play it differently every time. It can never be the same.

And I want to rock your gypsy soul Just like way back in the days of old And magnificently we will fold into the mystic