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.

Somebody's going to hear a song that will key in a nerve or something in their experience that represents their own vision. And the next person is going to see it completely different. So even what it means to me is probably irrelevant. It's totally irrelevant. What matters is what it means to each person listening to it.

When I started out in this business, I was a performer before I was a songwriter, I was a performer before I was recording. Performing is the roots. That's where it all came from. You didn't start out doing it because you wanted to make an album.

That's what it is-it's jazz. It's just jazz. That's what the whole thing is about to me. It's about what's happening right now in this context. This conversation is jazz to a certain extent. It's improvisation. What appeals to me about music is the improvization. That's what I don't like about the media-they're not living it.

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

I can see more naturalness in basic blues, basic R & B, basic rock 'n' roll.

You take stuff from different places, and sometimes you stick a line in because it rhymes, not because it makes sense.