I deliberately try not to cater for the commercial market, so I can't see myself in competition, you know, with second or third generation rock stars.
A lot of people who were writing when I came through originally as a singer-songwriter have disappeared.
I am about the arrangements and the layers of depth in the music.
My records do not require a lot of thought of 'What is this?' and 'What is that?' That would be too contrived for me.
I put out records to this day that are not necessarily in a sequence of anything. Some could be written a while back, some not. There is no set pattern.
My thinking musically has always been more advanced - it is difficult to get it down onto paper sometimes, even now.
For a long time, I couldn't actually deal with playing concerts; it was a totally alien concept to me, 'cause I was used to playing in clubs and dance halls.
You learn to read the audiences after a while, and there are all different kinds of gigs.
I don't feel comfortable doing interviews. My profession is music, and writing songs. That's what I do. I like to do it, but I hate to talk about it.
Being famous was extremely disappointing for me. When I became famous it was a complete drag and it is still a complete drag.
I write songs. Then, I record them. And, later, maybe I perform them on stage. That's what I do. That's my job. Simple.
As a developing musician, skiffle became a platform for me to start playing music.
Even today, skiffle is a defining part of my music. If I get the opportunity to just have a jam, skiffle is what I love to play.
Every performance is different. That's the beauty of it.
I do see value in music criticism. Most of the criticism I have received over the years has been very good.
I don't think nostalgia has to be negative.
I educated myself. To me, school was boring.
I learnt from Armstrong on the early recordings that you never sang a song the same way twice.
I never bought the commercial thing, at any stage of the game.
I never paid attention to what was contemporary or what was commercial, it didn't mean anything to me.
I think Paul McGuinness and U2 created the Irish music industry. It certainly wasn't there before that.
I understood jazz, I understood how it worked. That's what I apply to everything.
I'd love to live in Ireland but I'd like to live as me, not what someone thinks I am. People don't understand - I lived there before I was famous.
I'm not a rock singer and I don't want to be a rock singer. I'm not interested. It doesn't seem to get across.
If you're a pop singer, you don't need to evolve. You just get a set together, have some hit songs and play them over and over.
It was really strange for me when I started to play concerts in America where the audiences were all sitting down.
Large audiences did not suit my low-key approach.
My ambition when I started out was to play two or three gigs a week. And that's what I'm doing.
Skiffle was a name that was attached to what was, in essence, American folk music with a beat.
The first piece of music that captured my imagination was probably Ray Charles Live At Newport.
The point of jazz is, you do something and then you go on.
When I started studying tenor saxophone as a kid in Belfast, I did so with a guy named George Cassidy, who was also a big inspiration.
You can't stay the same. If you're a musician and a singer, you have to change, that's the way it works.
You've got to separate the singer and the songs.
I'm very lucky, I'm happy with life because my experiences led me to do what I had to do. I don't have any regrets whatsoever.
Hearing the blues changed my life.
When I started you were more in touch with the people you were playing to. There wasn't the distance or the separation that there is now.
You take stuff from different places, and sometimes you stick a line in because it rhymes, not because it makes sense.
Singing is my profession - there is no plan B.
I always record far more than I can use. There's probably twice as much recorded as comes out.
If it's what you do and you can do it, then you do it.
There's always got to be a struggle. What else is there? That's what life is made of. I don't know anything else. If there is, tell me about it.
Music is spiritual. The music business is not.
These days politics, religion, media seem to get all mixed up. Television became the new religion a long time back and the media has taken over.
The future is keeping you out of the present time.
I just need somewhere to dump all my negativity.
A famous person to themselves, they don't get up in the morning and think, I'm famous. I'm not famous to me. Famous is a perception.
I went back to Belfast and started a club, the Maritime. No one had thought about doing a blues club, so I was the first.
In order to win you must be prepared to lose sometime. And leave one or two cards showing.
I've never felt like I was born with a silver spoon at all, although I've felt like howling at the moon a lot of times!
There is no black-and-white situation. It's all part of life. Highs, lows, middles.
I think when you get past your second album, it all becomes something of a routine. So you have to struggle against that, find a way of making what you do sound fresh and new each time.
