I got bored with the old way - it came too easy. I worked until I could play and chord changes at any tempo in any key, and then said 'What else is there?' Now I'm finding out.
It's big production. It's huge. It's using studio technology to your benefit. You don't go in and play live and then just take the tapes and get them mastered. You have to create.
I started in 1946 in radio. I was ten years old. I was discovered singing in a school play. Someone was in the audience and it's six degrees of separation.
Play not with paradoxes. That caustic which you handle in order to scorch others may happen to sear your own fingers and make them dead to the quality of things.
In some types of music I'm working out all the chords one bar at a time - the whole structure, because it's about that. And there are other pieces which are really about - okay, the melody is going to start here and play through to here.
I think that there's a lot more freedom in the low budget, the independent films where, unfortunately, you don't have the money, necessarily, to get the orchestras in there to play a lot of stuff. But, you have a lot more freedom, very often.
We decided to play the NEC because we were asked to, and because we actually rather like the place: we've always enjoyed doing it before. We don't often get sensible offers to play in the UK, so most years we just play on the mainland, with the occasional exotic detour.
