If you're 20 years old, you've grown up without buying albums.
To go see a band in a big venue is a difficult experience. I don't really like that too much. I'm not a guy who puts on iTunes and goes, "Oh, what's hot!" I don't need to.
There is always the working out of things, and you have to have sort of a gut response to it. And an intellectual response. And an aesthetic response. All that comes from having done this for a long time. Instead of saying, "That's a really good rock track, and that will do," I'm looking for something that is more original and fresh. There are a lot of elements to get into it: a level or sophistication, passion and excitement.
For me, a great show is when there's a great rapport with the band and the audience, and we're all really into it. The first trick is to bring the audience into the band, break the ice, have a life, and be one, so you can enjoy the next hour and a half together.
As an artist, I move along in my life, into whatever things I'm doing, and I hear things where it's like, "Oh, that'd be a great [song] title! I'll use that!" So I keep a running list of titles on my computer. I've got these words and phrases that just sustained my interest. So I'm a step ahead, really, with the titling!
Sometimes, literally within a few minutes, you'd be off this amazing roaring scene and back at your hotel room, staring at the patten of the wallpaper. It's very surreal. You're back in your room, and it's dead quiet and really weird.
Actually, I think my hands are in the best shape they've ever been in terms of what I can do.
More recently, I used guitar synthesizer extensively on the two albums I did with Robert Fripp.
I was totally into jazz in my teens.
I'm just trying to avoid any sort of generic kind of music - I don't want to do generic jazz or fusion.
I've got four or five records in my head at a time that I try to work on and I would like to do a guitar trio record next - since The Police I've mostly made records with keyboards.
In The Police, in a trio situation - which I've come back to now - it's just so wide open that it does actually provide this arena where you can play with a certain freedom.
I think rock records tend to be very expensive.
I am pretty embroiled in moving on and moving forward with music.
Ive also just come off a year and a half playing acoustic shows which is fantastic for the hands, and changes your head a little bit.
It is not very practical in today’s world when you tour all over the place having a big band.
If I'm playing a violin thing, for instance, I tend to respond to that sound with the way I finger.
It's been very hard for the guitar as a serious synthesizer to compete with keyboards.
I don't have a great nostalgia for the past.
I spend a lot of time working as a painter and in my studio I go from upstairs where I paint to downstairs where I play and record, so I get this thing crossing over.
Of course the playing is important but writing and the establishing of what you are going for is prime too.
Aping what you've already done is just so dangerous and unrewarding.
I would like to play with electronic keyboards again.
The most obvious thing you can't do with a guitar synthesizer is to really sound like a guitar.
It accumulates over the years and I've led so many bands of my own now and forced myself into new situations... You would hope that you play better and better - until you just get too feeble to do it anymore.
