Jazz was always cool. That was what I liked about jazz - it was always cool. Now I see the cats that were basically cool getting kind of uncool. So that ruins what I feel about jazz.

There aren't any labels - all jazz means is improvization and you can never play a tune the same way twice. So jazz spills over into everything.

I learnt from Armstrong on the early recordings that you never sang a song the same way twice.

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.

You have to remember that writing those sorta songs is not reality, it's more like trance, dream, y'know, like dreamwork. The mythical thing can enter the creating but there's the mythical place and the real place. And there's both...I get it between waking and sleeping. Or, when I'm doing something else. I don't sit down and think I'm gonna write about subject X or subject Y. I could be doing something and an impression comes in from outside and the song emerges out of that. It's never thought about or contrived.

It's the same thing as a primitive of Africans, Indians, nomads or whatever - when they start getting up and doing their ritual and doing the dance, it's just what's coming through. It's the spirit. Rock 'n' roll is still primitive.

See the man on the TV with a phony smile. Bring you up, bring you down, he can turn your head around.