The only thing I have no control over is the politics that goes on within the record company. It's always been the same but it's far tougher now because record companies are run by financial people before they were run by creative people.

I don't get involved in record label politics.

If a politician murders his mother the first response of the press or of his opponents will likely be not that it was a terrible thing to do but rather that in a statement made six years before he had gone on record as being opposed to matricide.

All I knew about Ethiopia was from a few records that I like as well as what I read about the famine. But you get there and it's another world. It's filled with art and music and poetry and intellectuals and writers - all kinds of people.

I've always had a love for poetry and when I got signed to a record label I thought 'How odd that I'm doing a record before a book of poetry '

You pick up loads of baggage with your first record with reaction to it from fans and critics. So I went to Ireland by myself for a couple of weeks with my guitar. I read lots of poetry I read Patti Smith's autobiography and started words and phrases and then songs started to take shape.

You know bad poetry I wrote in high school can still be found on the Internet and you know there's a Web log of our college newspaper. You know there's so many different stages of my creative development are sort of on-record if somebody were to choose to look for them.

Vinyl is the real deal. I've always felt like until you buy the vinyl record you don't really own the album. And it's not just me or a little pet thing or some kind of retro romantic thing from the past. It is still alive.

I've been there and done all that sold millions of records and that doesn't bring you peace.

Today we have two Vietnams side by side North and South exchanging and working. We may not agree with all that North Vietnam is doing but they are living in peace. I would look for a better human rights record for North Vietnam but they are living side by side.

If man does find the solution for world peace it will be the most revolutionary reversal of his record we have ever known.

I had daydreams and fantasies when I was growing up. I always wanted to live in a log cabin at the foot of a mountain. I would ride my horse to town and pick up provisions. Then return to the cabin with a big open fire a record player and peace.

To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written as with a sunbeam in the whole volume of human nature by the hand of the divinity itself and can never be erased.

I'm always going to do that - record and make music.

I just want to keep making music recording and trying different things. I don't want to do the same thing all the time.

I love recording music.