Then I got together with my brother and a friend and we decided to play dates. The more we played, the more we wanted to do it. And it got to a stage where we wanted to do it all the time.

A lot of our stuff recently has been routine for the studio, when it should have been routine for the stage, and that's why it sound different. I think the writing's the same, maybe, but it's the fact that we spend more time in the studio and less on the road that's changed the sound of it.

What I try to do probably doesn't come out. What I've worked out what I do - I might not be right - is to do something very personal, and then suddenly I look at it, up in the air. I blow it up and look at it and then I come down again - a better man.

I think that songwriting changed when groups started spending more time in the studio.

What struck me was that it was more like the family Christmas I enjoyed as a child growing up in London. Thanksgiving is a time for sharing and even though they throw up their eyes as though it were a chore, family members traditionally gather for a reunion at the house of the oldest relative.

At one time they've been the most important thing to me. So I can't hear our records on the radio, I can't stand it, because they sound so out of what everyone else is doing.

I was an art student at the time, like thousands of others.

I still like to keep tapes of the few minutes before the final take, things that happen before the session. Maybe it's superstitious, but I believe if I had done things differently - if I had walked around the studio or gone out - it wouldn't have turned out that way.

I like autumn things.