In the States, this type of jam-band phenomena has opened it up for groups to improvise, admittedly more in the groove area, as opposed to the straight-ahead jazz thing - which is good for me, as that's one part of where I'm at. It's been so great pl...
Falling in love is awesome, but I'm never drawn to happy songs per se, so whenever you sit down to write a heartbreak song and you're happily in love, it's like, 'OK, now I have to go back to a sad place to get something good.'
I was very lucky. Things happened, both bad and good, but I never got into real, deep trouble. But it wore me down. By the time I was 18, I was done. I didn't want to live the life any more. I needed to develop past the point that busking takes you t...
I want to get away from the social vampires in Tucson. The people who have no lives of their own and meet me and know who I am and feel entitled to say negative things. I have good friends here, especially in the bands. But a lot of it is just like h...
Having good health, being able to breathe and be happy, that's one of the most beautiful gifts. On top of that, I have the gift to play music and make people happy through that. I'm just telling you from my heart, I'm so in love with life.
AC/DC, Def Leppard, Alice Cooper - I learned stories of all these guys. That's when I fell in love with Queen, which is one of my favorite bands of all time... I started paying attention to what made music good. I started paying attention to why I li...
I would consider myself a perfectionist, yeah. I don't think that is always that helpful, either. Sometimes it's good to be a little more open-minded; you can overthink things when things are actually fine, and it's that moment that you lose it. Look...
I'm not saying you have to be totally despondent or anything, but... in New York, it's cold sometimes; it rains sometimes; even if everything in your life is great, bad weather can set the mood. You can write songs in New York because it's not always...
It's kind of like some kind of church for me, playing live. Each show, good people from different pockets of the world come and open their soul and let their spirits mingle and dance. That energy comes up through me, and all I do is channel it; it's ...
I think I'm too cynical for L.A. My sense of humor doesn't go down well here, which probably affects my love life. I need to have a laugh track following me around so people know I'm trying to be funny.
I maintain that when I finally retire from my career in music, I will go and live back in Wales - when I am an old person, if I live to be an old person. The water I miss, and the air, there's something different about it. And I miss the simple life.
As a kid I'd lie awake at night and convince myself that a meteor was about to hit the Earth. It's my fatalistic streak, which I've inherited from my mum. I firmly believe something cataclysmic is going to happen in my lifetime and I have to be prepa...
I've seen kids turn their lives around. It's usually a kid who's outside of the team-sport world, or maybe has a darker personality or doesn't fit in. Skateboarding ends up being something they latch onto. It sounds hokey, but finding a focus on some...
I love being able to go on local flights when the weather is right. I've popped to the Isle of Wight, Cornwall and been mountain flying in Wales. When I got my licence I was over the moon, it was one of the greatest days of my life - it took two year...
I've always been attracted to the darker things in life. I was never one to go for light, airy stuff, even as a child. My whole aesthetic has always been one of the darker side. That rings true also in my tastes in music. It's just always something I...
I was always taught as a kid that if there's anything you want in life, you've got to work towards it. I guess that sort of stayed with me, really. But also, for me, from the time I was, like, 10 years old, all I ever wanted to do was be in a band an...
My success set me up for life, and it meant that I could retire from the music industry at 27 to spend time with my newborn daughter and my wife. My time away from the spotlight allowed me to rediscover my love for music, and I'm doing it for me now ...
I find myself more affected by music the more I do it. Particularly when you're touring, and you're in the bus, and you're listening to loads of music. Life becomes far more dramatic, I guess - you're never in the same place; you're constantly meetin...
Punk rock and skateboarding took the 'school' out of living your life, and I related to learning as I went, doing a lot of different things that I liked, when I liked. Consequently, I'm mediocre at all of the above, but still stoked on being a lifeti...
I started playing guitar back in '56. I was a teenager, and guitars had just come in, and I had a thing for it and got one. Started learning lead breaks from songs, because that was the easiest thing to do at the time. I had the guitar for two years ...
But, in the end, even a song that's as politically bland as Blowin in the Wind, you probably wouldn't get up and sing that now, whereas some of Bob Dylan's love songs that were contemporary with that, like say Girl from the North Country, you can sti...
