Conversation has never really been my strong point. There was a time when I used to find myself doing interviews and hardly saying anything. I still find I have to make the effort sometimes now although it is becoming easier. I suppose that's why I write songs. They give you time to think. They can be more precise and say so much more than a hundred conversations sometimes. If the song's good. So he's here and I'm here. I've got a new album out. Produced it myself. I'm proud of it. I've never really done that before. I've always had control over the album. Very much so. Even when I did the album with Steve Lillywhite I didn't go to him and say 'stamp your sound on these songs'. I went along with the songs sounding exactly how I wanted them and he produced them after that. That's how I do my demos. Always have done. I try to make them as polished as possible. I'll write the song on a guitar or a piano. Then I think about what instruments I want to play what on the song. That always works out very logically for me. It might not sound logical but it is for me. When I did Secret Secrets I worked everything out exactly. All the brass parts I did. I did some on a keyboard and I play a bit of saxophone so that was handy, I even worked out the drums on my Drumulator. Then I told the drummer exactly how I wanted him to play it. He's laughing at me now because I was miming playing the drums. I play the drums. That's how I mime playing the drums. I'm not what you'd call a multi-instrumentalist though. I'm not a Mike Oldfield. I can get a tune out of most instruments. Yeah, a bit like Roy Castle. But really I'm a guitarist. A very good one. You know it's funny, I kind of realised that I was very good when I was doing the new album. I had this guy in to play on one track. I played all the other parts myself but I had this guy in and he's very good and I was showing him what I wanted him to play. Then I thought, 'hang on, if I can play it to show him the notes why don't I do it myself?' I suppose I've got a pretty distinctive style of playing now. I can play in quite a lot of styles but I'm best at my style. That's the one I'm most confident with.
I'm not really a piano player. I've played less and less over the years so I've sort of regressed. I only really use the piano for writing now — all in C. It's the same with the acoustic guitar now — I don't play that half as much as I used to. I really enjoy playing electrics now; for all of the new album I just used an Ibanez Roadstar — it's brilliant. Tell a lie I used a Strat once but that was only a tiny part. But the Ibanez has got a whammy bar so I can be like Van Halen! I can't play that really fast stuff like the Heavy Metal guys do — that widdly widdly stuff — But I really like it. I like Heavy Metal — some of it is really brilliant. I like what you might call older Heavy Metal too like Led Zeppelin. I've got a few of their albums. At the moment I haven't got any new Heavy Metal albums like Iron Maiden or anything but it's quite possible that one day I could go into a record shop and buy one. That's not what you'd imagine me to like. What would you imagine me to like? You see what I listen to and what I play aren't the same thing at all so you'll probably make a wrong assumption. You don't like the new album. What are you here for if you don't like it? You think it's too heavy. When you say heavy do you mean heavy handed, clumsy or heavy as in rocky? I can see that you think it's rocky. I wrote the songs like that. If I'd have produced an album before it would sound like this one. I know there's a lot of distorted guitar on it. That's my Rockman. They're brilliant you know. They've got a new rack mounted one now. I've been trying to get hold of one really badly but there's a waiting list until the end of time and I just can't get my hands on one. No, not even with a name like Joan Armatrading. From: https://www.muzines.co.uk/articles/tale-of-a-trick/11007
