I got a publishing deal with BMG, they were supportive, and some money to record demos.

I also wanted to make a record that was about other things than romance, yeah, after two years on the road singing all the songs from the first album, I got kind of tired of that.

I privilege the music over the lyrics.

I feel fortunate about being able to make the music I want to make and getting away with it.

I like connecting with people, and that's what good art is: a point of connection. There's nothing better, on stage or on film.

In the mid-1980s to the early 1990s I was writing songs not because I particularly liked what I was doing, but because I was desperately trying to get back into the charts. I really didn't enjoy it. I didn't like the music I was making, I wasn't proud of it, like I have been before or since.

Look at someone like Kanye West - ego is the death of a lot of art. To believe in yourself that much is to stop being an artist.

By the mid-'60s, recorded music was much more like painting than it was like traditional music. When you went into the studio, you could put a sound down, then you could squeeze it around, spread it all around the canvas.