I've only been to Ireland once, and I felt I would wake up with voices in my head, almost like music, and that if I were a songwriter, I would be very inspired.
My parents were worried about me, certainly when I became so deeply interested in music and people like the New York Dolls who, at the time, were very peculiar indeed.
I didn't really see the British punk movement, if that's what it was, as wildly original, because I had been listening so intently to all the New York music since 1973, really.
I write a lot of music in my time off and I compose most of the songs on guitar. I've actually gone into the studio and recorded a few things, but it's tough trying to sell a song. It's all about finding that hook, that melody.
With a lot of action scores, you're competing with a lot of noise. Say there's a big explosion: the music would conventionally have a lot of Hollywood-style percussion or brass, because that's the only thing that will cut through.
My plays are for the kind of black people who relate to funk music, to Parliament-Funkadelic. When those guys get out of a spaceship - the idea that black people are from outer space, there's a poetic truth to that. We are this vast people.
Before I got Doctor Who, I went to the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. I went back to take the final grade exam, which is the grade you have to take before you can take the teacher's diploma.
When we started in the early '60s, football had a little bit of a tradition. But, they didn't have a mythology. And NFL Films, through our music and our scripts and our photography, created a mythology for the sport.
You've got to be true to who you are and what you do. I'm more of a hip-hop feel person. Music is how you feel. The younger the mind, that's how I wanna be.
Musicians are often asked to answer for an entire culture, or for an entire movement. It's a process of commodification. It becomes packaged and summarized in a word like 'emo' or 'grunge'... or 'folk music.' I think that's just language itself, tryi...
As long as your intention is pure, and you know what you're in it for, then you're alright. And I'm in it because I enjoy it. I take it seriously... real seriously. I mean I could sit and talk all day about the music.
When you do a show five days a week and one night a week, the way I was doing, you use up so much music every day that pretty soon you find yourself hustling for material.
I knew what I wanted to be, but I didn't know exactly how to get there. I thought you move to Nashville, you sing downtown, and someone discovers you, and you become a country music star. I had no idea.
Hopefully, there's a place in music for Tinted Windows. If we're really trying to be iconic, we should just stop right now. If one of us could die, that would also help. But I don't think anybody wants that gig.
The Tinted Windows shows were very fun but it's very different for me as a performer. I'm not playing music - I'm just singing and I missed that. I miss rocking out on keys, drums, guitar... whatever it is.
Doing something like that, quite radically changing your approach to sound in one go, could leave you high and dry. It's happened before where people have changed direction and then everyone's stopped liking their music.
I take certain steps to make sure I'm relevant artistically. I always have new music and a reason to be on the road. I'm not just playing 'Get By' over and over. I have 12 albums.
I'm influenced by all kinds of music. I have a very diverse iPod. You never know if I've got it on shuffle. You never know what you are going to hear next. I like all genres.
I've always wanted my music to have that desperation, where you just want to strip your clothes off and run down the highway. I want the feeling where you don't really know what to do with yourself - in the vocals, in the production. Everything.
They told me that they are starting a classic label, and wanted me to be the first artist. So I signed, and am producing myself, and writing my own music, but I'm their first artist on their classic label. And I have creative control.
If you can use a search engine, you can find any piece of music that's been recorded for free. I'm not saying that's right, but it's a fact, and I'm surprised that more people don't accept or acknowledge that and try to adapt in some way.