For me, it's joyous to play live, because I've spent most of my life doing it, from when I was 17, playing in Country & Western bands and in working men's clubs or whatever.In the 1970's I toured the UK playing guitar in soul backing bands. The early '80s were spent playing in holiday camp bands backing cabaret and comedians and magicians. I've done some crap gigs too.

It's true that I played jazz for a long time with all sorts of people but I stopped because I can never equal my heroes John Coltrane and Miles Davis. I'll never be as good or as spiritual as they were thirty years ago. That's why I thought it more useful to contribute something to the present-day music, to start something new.

I've always been interested in further sounds you can get from guitars either by using pedals or by alternative ways of playing. For instance, playing rhythms behind the bridge with a paint brush and using effects on that sound or bowing the strings with a pair of long-nose pliers. In these kinds of ways you can make the guitar go into other worlds which wouldn't happen playing in the conventional way.

Often the most inspirational music has appeared where I least expected it- hearing Hendrix when I was just a kid listening to crap pop music, hearing Coltrane when I was mainly into James Brown, Public Enemy when I was mainly playing jazz -so when Chuck D came up and freestyled over Machine Gun at a festival Portishead played in Barcelona, that was pretty cool.