I find it extremely difficult talking about my songs because there's so many different things that can make a song come together.

In deep confusion, in great despair, when I reach out for him, he is there. When I am lonely as I can be, then I know God shines his light on me.

Hark, now hear the sailors cry, smell the sea, and feel the sky let your soul & spirit fly, into the mystic.

I didn't know what some of the stuff on Astral Weeks was about until years later.

These days politics, religion, media seem to get all mixed up. Television became the new religion a long time back and the media has taken over.

I'd much prefer to hear somebody like Ed Thigpen [drummer with New York session group Stuff, and featured on innumerable hits] take a solo. I mean, that's what it is. I'd much rather hear that than the jazz/rock thing because it's blowing an aspect of jazz that I really like...the level where you can snap your fingers to it and you can groove to it. You can do anything to it.

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.