I do understand the perspective of die-hard fans who complain that we don't play the same as the record, but at the same time I think fans are getting an amazing deal.
I think where you play is important.
I have a lot of experience in playing all sorts of venues. And one of my interests is to understand what constitutes the vibe of a place and what makes one concert different from another. You can't fully measure or calculate these things, yet they are absolutely evident once you're on stage.
One of my interests is to understand what constitutes the vibe of a place and what makes one concert different from another.
I am very sensitive to music, so I can quite easily allow myself to access that space in which I am completely taken over. And you can get quite a reaction out of the crowd when you do that.
I think it's quite jarring and exciting when you see someone in the thrall of being completely transported by the music they're sharing with you.
I think entertainment is a perfectly noble occupation.
The human condition is what it is. We can see beauty and wonder in the world, but we also face imminent death and uncertainty, and we often need to sidestep the idea of time and communicate with each other, not with words but with a sense of community and union. I don't want to make an overreaching statement, but I think that's the function of culture.
I love communicating with people, and sometimes language is not enough. I think that's what poetry is, where you can mess with language and get through to things that can't be described or communicated through regular language or scientific processes.
Sometimes language is not enough.
In some traditional African dances, people wear masks in order to become the embodiments of particular spirits. I have heard that they often cover the mouth-piece with spider webs or something that resonates, so that their voice gets distorted, ceasing to be the voice of a human and becoming representative of a voice that comes from another world.
In a lot of African instruments, you find a rattle, and sound engineers have a hard time making sense of it.
I think the origins of music have probably to do with magic and transcendence as well.
In Western classical music the idea of holiness, purity, perfection, and total beauty is expressed through clarity of sound - a bell-like sound. Obviously, that has its own place, and it's a beautiful way of doing it. But I don't think I am the first to point out that in Africa, the more buzzing the sound is, the more it indicates the other world - the spirit world.
On a very technical level, I am a geek who is interested in the intricacy of rhythm playing, so I like comparing and working out its details.
I don't want to copy the people I admire - I'd rather find out what inspired them and try to find my own way through it.
I like to go to old versions and find out what effect beats and scales have on your body, how they can transport you.
The closer you get to the source, the more you begin to understand its essential nature.
Going to the Sahara Desert and meeting the Touareg band Tinariwen was a life-changing experience. All through that time, I have just carried on learning and meeting musicians, and I keep finding links between different forms.
There actually had been a tradition within English music of the '60s of people looking eastwards, maybe in quite a naïve way, but nonetheless, you had musicians like George Harrison or Bryan Jones recording the musicians of Joujouka in North Africa.
Going to Morocco was massive; that's where I really found music which had the African syncopation and swing mixed with Arabic strains, and together they had this transporting, bittersweet quality.
I always wanted to know what the music behind some music was, or where it came from, and that gave me a point of reference for understanding the music I was listening to.
I have much clearer memories of my time in Egypt: songs on the radio, the rhythms that accompanied belly dancers, the sound of the adhan - the Muslim call to prayer. I just soaked it all up.
I am not scared of making mistakes.
I think what a lot of people forget is that a lot of the music in the '60s and the '70s was made in the spirit of daring, spontaneity, and adventure, so the minute all that sinks into this sense of a classic form, it has lost its spirit.
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