“Don’t call my lyrics poetry. It’s an insult to real poets.”

I am a simple vessel with complex overtones, opinionated on occasions but willing to listen.

My Mother set me on the right track, Marty Robbins made me want to write songs, and Jesus Christ did the rest.

Lincolnshire is the Idaho of England. You were either going to drive a tractor for the rest of your life or head for the city to work in a factory.

One reason I quit doing interviews after years and years and years was because I was making things up.

Read books, discover the blues and don’t Tweet.

Captain Fantastic’ was the first album in history to enter the (American) album chart at number one. We did it for a second time after that. Now that’s not a boast, that’s frightening.

My favorite thing is coming up with titles. The majority of the songs I’ve every written I’ve always thought of the title before I’ve written the song.

I like to work quickly; I never like to waste any time. I never write half a song and come back to it later at all. It all has to be done at once. I lose interest if it doesn’t.

My mother’s father taught English literature. When I was about ten or eleven, I could recite Macaulay’s ‘Lays of Ancient Rome.’ While other kids were playing pedestrian war games, I’d be Horatius keeping the bridge.

Elton John’s home is laden with trinkets and books relating to Satanism and witchcraft.

The worst thing about me is that I’ll buy albums and put them away on the shelf and forget that I’ve got them.

Basically it takes me very little time to write a song. If I find myself taking more than an hour to do it I usually forget it, and try something else.

I have been accused of being a very simplistic, very lyrical player, and that’s okay. That just comes from the blues, which is my background. But every day you wake up and transcend. You can’t ever rest on your laurels.

I don’t really know what inspires me to write the music I do, but usually, the music will set the tone for the lyrics.

A song is a song. But there are some songs, ah, some songs are the greatest. The Beatles song Yesterday. Listen to the lyrics.

If you really look at my lyrics, nobody’s exempt. Nobody’s exempt from observation, criticism or what I think is correction.

I stopped telling people what lyrics meant to them when I saw them tattoo it on them, because it clearly meant much more to them than it ever did to me.

I feel like ‘Next To Me’ is a great introduction because it’s a simple song that has a simple message for me. I wanted to introduce something that lyrically I’m proud of and introduces me both as an artist and as a writer.

My lyrics aren’t offensive. Some people find everything offensive.

If I hadn’t had Freddie Mercury’s lyrics to hold on to as a kid I don’t know where I would be. It taught me about all forms of music… it would open my mind. I never really had a bigger teacher in my whole life.