Which song describes you best?
“‘F*!#in’ Up’ by Neil Young.”
What is heaven?
“A great cup of espresso in England.”
What is hell?
“Most of the cups of coffee you get in England.”
What is your earliest memory? “Climbing up the boxes in my closet when I was around four, trying to get to a giant lollipop that my uncle had brought me back from the navy. The boxes collapsed and I busted my head.”
What is your greatest fear? “I don’t have fears.”
Who is your all-time hero? “Cormac McCarthy, the writer.”
What is the worst trouble you’ve been in? “The constant trouble of how to resolve a chorus. It’s been going on for 20 years. But whenever I’m in doubt, I just end on a minor.”
Who was the first love of your life? “My dog, Casey.”
What is your greatest talent? “I don’t consider myself unusually talented. Making music is a talent in that I’m just sort of a conduit, and it goes from the air through me and on to recording tape. But I’ve been working at it a long time so it’s been refined. I think many people have the opportunity to turn what is in the air into art. Unfortunately, there are great painters and songwriters who work in the power plant that we’ll never see or hear.”
Upon whom would you like to exact revenge? Why? How? “I try not to dwell on revenge because it gives you cancer. Instead I try to take it out on inanimate objects – like shooting a tape deck with a shotgun or shooting a chainsaw with a nine millimetre. That sort of thing is healthy.”
What is your most treasured possession? “My motorcycle, a ’72 Moto Guzzi Eldorado.”
What have you most regretted doing while drunk? “I got really drunk in Bristol last time, and I couldn’t remember what some of the songs were. The rest of the band said it was like theatre.”
What can you cook? “Tex Mex.”
What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received? “We recorded a session for VH-1. It was really embarrassing – you know, close-ups of fingers on the fret, really clichid stuff – and they’d tried to dictate what songs we were gonna do. Thom Yorke said, ‘You better work that out beforehand otherwise they’ll make you do it.'”
Can you read music? “No.”
If you were invisible for a day, what would you do? “Living in the country, there are no advantages to being invisible.”
What are your three final wishes? “To have a baby, to be able to make records that are appreciated, and to have one of the new Moto Guzzi V11 Sports.”