There was a conflict - the actual putting together of the reality of the situation didn't seem to gel. I'd been doing kind of a slow ballad type of thing on records, but when it came to performing, I felt I was limiting myself.

I realized I was growing up or something like that. You have responsibilities...you've got to think about getting your act together. I didn't even know what it had been doing to me. I didn't realize how dangerous it was. People talked in terms of drugs and I used to think in terms of...well in Ireland, everybody drinks. Nobody gives it a second thought. You're Irish number one and you're a drinker number two. That's the first two things about us Irish.

I think Paul McGuinness and U2 created the Irish music industry. It certainly wasn't there before that.

I just wanted to have a look at my whole musical career, get right back to when I started and why I started doing it in the first place.

A lot of things come together to make up a song. It's just images.

The theory is that you don't play a song the same way twice because it's jazz. That's where I'm coming from.

The trip had become boring. It wasn't exciting anymore to totally be a singer/songwriter because it wasn't working for me.