Really, I listen to more hip hop probably than most other things. That's where I get a lot of my influence from because it's so eclectic. So that's what I love.

When I read about Gram Parsons' dream of this Cosmic American Music when I was in my late teens, that stuck with me: that idea, that ambition, to draw off the roots of music but take it somewhere fresh.

Without music and creativity, I'd need other forms of therapy. But for me, the life process is the process of healing yourself. 'Break the Night' is about offering hope to people, about breaking through the darkness.

I'd definitely say I'm a depressive, someone who suffers from depression.

I've got a letter from the Dalai Lama at home.

What happened in the '70s was albums and concerts began making a hell of a lot more money, and then the suits got involved.

You can find the greatest sound of all time, and someone's going to squash it down to a tiny little earphone anyway or play it through the computer, and that is a big thing people have to think about now.

Criticism is beyond your control and is a collective group of people deciding things about you that may or may not be true. Some critics look for more when there's no need to. They have a dotto-dot picture of me they are intent on filling in.

Life is about unforgettable and transcendent moments, isn't it? The point of music is to get the moment.

Creativity, for me, is almost like therapy; my songs take you into the underbelly of my mind, and there's some dark stuff in there.

I'm not driven by fame or success. I'm quite a shy, introverted person, and I could easily melt away into the background.

I think I was born to be a songwriter.

You can radically change a person's life with a tune. I don't think people truly understand or appreciate how powerful that is.

I've never written a 'Revolver' or a 'Pet Sounds.'

I've got kids now; it changes you radically.

With 'Break The Night,' each verse is saying, 'Nothing's going right today; nothing ever does.' It's about that kind of repetition, it's that kind of mantra you can get in your mind when you're depressed or down, when it's become like a hamster on a wheel - it's very difficult to break.

Not many people come out of a big band as the lead singer/songwriter and making a record, and all of a sudden we're all happily sailing at the same pace as we were before.

Sometimes, you're before your time with ideas, and you have to accept that you can't know.

If you start shaping everything you do trying to be in step with whatever is going on in the world, you're often out of step by the time people hear it. It's a bit like fashion.

I lost a good friend a few years ago, and it happened quite suddenly. Any event like that leaves you with questions. Would a phone call have made a difference? Did the person know that you were there for them?

I'm totally up for experimental music. I'm up for music that they don't play on the radio, and I take in all of it. But my thing, the thing that comes most natural to me, is making the stuff that has a melody; it has a soul to it, yet it's head music.

We'd lie on the floor, turn the lights out, put two speakers on either side of our ears, and try to blow our minds with music. I know that I want to make a record that does that yet a record that, if it was played on the radio at twelve in the afternoon, the guy making the wall - the guy cleaning the motorway - he's got a melody to hang on.

Of course, fatherhood fundamentally changes a lot of your life, but it enriches you, too.

My thing is, I've yet to meet a well person. The spectrum is unbelievably wide, the triggers for depression and manic depression.