I can never make up my mind if I'm happy being a flute player, or if I wish I were Eric Clapton.
Unnur Birna is a Reykjavik-based violinist and singer. She has performed as a session musician with countless Icelandic and international artists while recording and appearing as a solo artist as well. Unnur has joined me as an unpaid guest on a few Icelandic shows in recent years, so it is a great pleasure to return the favour and appear on one of her songs at last. This new track, Sunshine, came about in Italy, written as an ode to sunlight and happiness after fleeing the dark winter in Iceland
It's only the giving that makes you what you are.
The flute was an alternative to being a small fish in an increasingly bigger pool filled with a number of great guitar players.
Another tea-time, another day older.
I don't think successful musicians were really put on this planet in order to have a great time, pat themselves on the back and say, 'Oh, what a clever boy I am!' I think that, like most artists, we were put on the planet to suffer just a little. And we do.
Seek that which within lies waiting to begin the fight of your life that is everyday.
But the tune ends too soon for us all
I make up my own mind in light of available facts, with my own experience and a sense of personal ethics.
I think it's really the job of the composer, the artist, the painter, the writer to present people with options. I'm just really reflecting the thoughts and actions around me.
A lot of pop music is about stealing pocket money from children.
I'm really terrible with small children; they're small, noisy, irritating, damp and soggy.
Our politicians may fail us, but Status Quo always delivers on the promise.
Question all as to their ways and learn the secrets that they hold
There's always going to be a little bit of autobiographical content to everything. It's how you lend some authority to what you write - you give it that weight by drawing on your direct experiences and indirect experiences from people that you know well, or a little.
I'm very much an observer and a conduit of thoughts and ideas.
As a musician, life is not over just because you are getting older, and so I find retirement a very frightening and dark thought.
Why do the faithful have such a will, to believe in something? And call in the name they choose, having chosen nothing.
Martin, Dave, and I get together and rough out a few songs and put them on cassettes for some reference...With the actual music, I'm not interested in objectivity, quite the opposite. I want a solely and totally subjective experience...A lot of pop music is about stealing pocket money from children.
I suppose when I started playing guitar, it was the means to an end. I never thought of myself as a fully fledged guitar instrumentalist. And my early excursions on the electric guitar were curtailed when Eric Clapton came on the scene, and I decided I was never going to be in the same arena as a Clapton or a Peter Green.
All the time I was playing the flute, the lines, the solos, the riffs, the construction, were based on my guitar skills. I did not play the flute to exploit its natural faculties, but I used it as a surrogate guitar.
Oh father high in heaven - smile down upon your sonWho's busy with his money games - his women and his gun.
The original Jethro Tull was a 19th century English agriculturist who invented a seed drill you see. The first automatic process where by small holes were made in Mother Earth and even smaller seeds were deposited one at a time and neatly covered over as a cat does after having being naughty.
It was instilled in me that the money I was given was not to be lost or spent on any other purpose.
We do hear perhaps too many accolades generally aimed at people like Steve Jobs. We have to remember that there are other classic things in life that we undervalue and take them for granted. If you think of the classic lines of the modern jet aircraft, it's really been there since early World War II.
