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.

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.

I always record far more than I can use. There's probably twice as much recorded as comes out.

Being famous was extremely disappointing for me. When I became famous it was a complete drag and it is still a complete drag.

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.

Hearing the blues changed my life.

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!

You take stuff from different places, and sometimes you stick a line in because it rhymes, not because it makes sense.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I don't think nostalgia has to be negative.

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 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.

You've got to separate the singer and the songs.

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.

The first piece of music that captured my imagination was probably Ray Charles Live At Newport.

It was really strange for me when I started to play concerts in America where the audiences were all sitting down.

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.

I understood jazz, I understood how it worked. That's what I apply to everything.

I think Paul McGuinness and U2 created the Irish music industry. It certainly wasn't there before that.

I never paid attention to what was contemporary or what was commercial, it didn't mean anything to me.

I never bought the commercial thing, at any stage of the game.

I educated myself. To me, school was boring.

I do see value in music criticism. Most of the criticism I have received over the years has been very good.

As a developing musician, skiffle became a platform for me to start playing music.

You learn to read the audiences after a while, and there are all different kinds of gigs.

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.

My thinking musically has always been more advanced - it is difficult to get it down onto paper sometimes, even now.