Did you ever hear about the rock and roll singer who got 3 or 4 Cadillacs, saying power to the people, dance to the music, wants you to pat him on the back.

Then it evolved into more of a ballad style singer/songwriter thing. And there was a conflict in trying to merge the two styles with the same band behind me. 'Cause the musicians that I would need to do ballad-oriented tunes would require musicians who were more into jazz.

When I started studying tenor saxophone as a kid in Belfast, I did so with a guy named George Cassidy, who was also a big inspiration.

I was just getting tired of the image bullshit...that man of mystery trip and what have you. What's that all about?

I'd love to live in Ireland but I'd like to live as me, not what someone thinks I am. People don't understand - I lived there before I was famous.

There's no difference between lyrics and poetry. Words are words. The only difference is the people who are in academic positions and call themselves poets and have an academic stance. They've got something to lose if they say it's all poetry; if there's not music to it, and you have to wear a certain kind of checkered shirt or something like that. It's all the same. Lyrics are lyrics, poetry is poetry, lyrics are poetry, and poetry is lyrics. They are interchangeable to me.

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.