Just because a guitar is old doesn't make it good... I've seen guitars that were old but weren't as good as the reissue ... for me, it's not the age that makes it happen, it's the quality of the instrument.

The blessing of this music is that it is fun to do and it keeps evolving.

Of course when you are a kid you listen to what your parents had around. A lot of gospel, jazz. Now when I started to listen to music on my own it was around the time of the birth of rock and roll. Shortly thereafter I started to get into more blues and more traditional rootsy American music.

If you make the same mistake 3 times, that becomes ‘your arrangement’

We do a wealth of stuff (live), drawing from over the years.

I was writing a lot of true love songs-true love almost gone wrong but saved at the last moment...Many of the best songs get written in a state of abject misery. I prefer to write fewer songs and have less cataclysmic events in my life...Some hit songs are really stupid, and who knows why they're hits. But a lot of hit songs are really good.

I'm not sure I ever pleased Ian [Buchanan] with my progress, but he continued to tolerate me. I had to work at everything that I did. Well, it wasn't work it was fun actually.