You must hold on to the sort of finger-painting aspect of music. That’s something I learned, particularly from listening to Neil Young. Tom Waits is another one, because Tom’s music is incredibly sophisticated and beautifully arranged, but he’s using a toolbox that’s unlike anybody else’s.

People become so deeply attached to the sound of one period that they blow a fuse when you move on. I’ve heard people complain bitterly about recordings they haven’t even heard.

For all the courage that we never had, I’m just about glad.

I get very frustrated by this term ‘genre exercise.’ I mean, what exactly is that? Genre is not really relevant when you are writing a song; hopefully you are doing it to explore something, to create something, and I don’t agree that any of my albums are genre exercises.

I’m a working travelling musician, but just on a bigger scale.

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture – it’s really a stupid thing to want to do.

When you work with new people, I think that it throws all of the matters into relief, because you have to explain yourself every time. It’s like crossing a new border. They want to see your documents.

I didn’t know anything then about odd-metered bars of music, but as Burt told me years later, you don’t count those beats, you just feel them and the tension that they create.

I’ve been lucky to listen to lots of different types of music.

These are the sort of things that push you on in music – the curiosity, a passion for new ideas.