So I am one of those bass players who can do something and musically, it was back then and now it is even more, if you noticed on the new album, I am not playing all the time anymore.
When you love what you do, you just really fall in love with it. Sometimes you record a lot more songs than the album will even hold. You record like 300 songs and only 12 songs go on the album. It takes time. But if you love what you do, it works out.
Quite understandably, people think that if there's a six-year gap or whatever, that it's taken me six years to make the album. It's not really like that at all.
I'm 18 in this album. I'm not losing fans, and I'm not disrepecting women, but you reach the maturity of taking it to the next level with a girl. It was only necessary for me to have at least one song like that.
This 'Making Mirrors' album is far more personal, even if there's a character element to the sounds I'm working with. Every song on this album I stand behind; I feel like I have a close relationship with them. There are older songs where I can feel myself writing a story, so this is the first album where I'm proud of every lyric.'
From the first album, Led Zeppelin was always going to be a totally new approach from what had gone before - whether it was approaching the blues or folk music like 'Babe I'm Gonna Leave You': nothing existed like that.
Making a Christmas album is looked upon by some people as the thing you do when you are heading towards retirement.
After 'Win, Lose or Draw' we were workin' on another album that nobody's ever heard, and it's a good thing nobody heard it.
What started it all was the Kanye album, 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.' We started listening to that and just fell in love with it, fell in love with his production style.
But I'm always trying to plan ahead too and in doing so, and in working on this album, I've met a lot people that I hope to be involved with, on their records and in their situations.
It's a miracle was the last track recorded for the album, we based it on the rhythm from the middle of 'Late Home Tonight, where there's Graham Broad playing lots and lots of drums with me shouting in the background, pretending to be a mad Arab leader.
When my first album came out, it wasn't Bollywood. The love that I received from people was everything, and it still is everything for me.
I thought it was time to get a group together and the first person I thought of was Wayne Shorter. I called Wayne and in the meantime, Wayne called me to make an album with him, which was Super Nova.
We're gonna release a studio album probably a year from now and we've got these recordings that we did with Coco Taylor and Johnny Johnson, who was Chuck Berry's piano player.
It's true, there's a lot of melancholy in my music. I don't know why, I'm not a melancholy person. I've always been drawn to it. Ever since I was a kid, if I had an album I would play the ballads on repeat.
One of the first records I bought for myself was a Keith Whitley record. I still love the 'L.A. to Miami' album. There were so many things on there - 'Miami, My Amy,' 'Ten Feet Away,' 'Nobody in His Right Mind Would've Left Her.' I can put that album on repeat and listen.
Actually, recording the Suite Chic album was so much fun and while working on this new album, people that I've worked with from Suite Chic has lend their voice.
I've just got to get that album out. I have to get it out, if it's the last thing I do.
It varies from song to song, although Buck Owens and I recently collaborated on writing a duet together and am looking forward with a great deal of anticipation to recording that track for the new studio album.
The music industry is more singles-driven, and the attention span of culture becomes shorter and shorter, but we still grew up in the era where buying an album, looking at the artwork, putting it on and listening to it top to bottom, those were the experiences that really changed our lives. That's what we aim to make.
I have a lot of milestones that I'm proud of when it comes to music, 'Amerikkka's Most Wanted,' I'm extremely proud of that. Just because of what I had to go through to get that music produced, that album produced.
The album's not dead for me; I still buy vinyl albums.
Hard Day's Night was one of those great films that will never happen again to anyone in their lifetime. UA were in profit before we'd even finished shooting - The advance sales on the album - the film was out before the album was out was more than it cost UA to make the film.
When I went to record my first album, which should have been a punk album, there was a synthesiser in the control room. I'd never seen one before but they let me have a go on it and I loved it to bits.
I see songs not as a commodity used up when the album goes off the charts, which is often the case with pop songs. I see them as a body of work. Life should be breathed into them.
The name of the album is 'Non-Fiction'. And, I'm calling it that because the name of every song on this album is derived from a true story. Now, some of the stories are mine. Some of the stories belong to some of my fans.
For this album I was determined to do it my way. Take my time. I'm gonna win, lose or draw on my own.
I have the time needed to support the album and tour.
You're always frustrated, you don't have the chance to do a song on the album, like the Beatles did with Ringo and George, or like Led Zeppelin, where everybody was given a chance to contribute. There never is a chance with the Stones.
I'm really careful with what the music gets put with, and we say no to so much stuff, loads of it, for things that might quadruple the sales of my album. But if it doesn't fit then it doesn't fit, you know?
Record sales don't really mean anything. For us, the pressure is imagining some 15-year-old kid in Cincinnati who buys our album and doesn't feel like he wasted his pocket money.
I was really inspired while I was pregnant and I wrote a whole album for my baby. I wanted to write a kids album that didn't annoy parents. I used The Beatles 'Rocky Raccoon' as sort of a starting place for my writing.
When it's a rapper's album or a singer's album, there's a tendency to want a text-based or theme-based narrative.
Recording an album and doing it live are like two different animals. There are some people that are great singers live, horrible in the studio.
'The Boatman's Call' is amazing; it's an album of love songs, really beautiful.
When I had a record deal in the '90s, that was my dream - to make an album like Barbra Streisand's Broadway album - and they laughed me out of the room. Broadway wasn't cool. But artists like Michael Buble and Josh Groban have brought the classic genre back to the forefront, so I'm trying to find my way inside that market.
