What happened on September 11 wasn’t the first act of war, it was the most unspeakable act of murder and terrorism. But it was construed by a very small group of people – there is no army out there in the dark waiting to take over America.
I think if you’re going to make political art, you have to engage at some level. You can’t just write about politics, you have to try and be politics as well.
So, in some ways, the political songs tend to be a bit more like reportage, whereas the love songs tend to be like novels, you can pick them up off the shelf and go into them any time.
Part of the problem with some elements of the European debate is that they hanker for the days when we were a great power. Those days are gone, and they went a long time ago.
