"Well that was a big influence for their take on Americana, and I just like the juxtaposition of their extreme Britishness and singing about Oklahoma. And it's funny, Ian Svenonius has this whole thing about how Americans only accepted black music once it was taught to us by our British overlords. The Beatles and The Stones lacked the context to realise that maybe it's inappropriate to take on this Southern accent. I feel like Ray Davies has a little more tact, like, "No, I'm not going to sing like that!" A lot of the time I will sing in a kind of an English accent - not total English, but definitely more English than country, because my context is growing up and listening to The Beatles and thinking I like the way John Lennon sings it. It's easier not to sing a hard "r", it always sounds country when you sing an "arr". I would never do a Jamaican accent. I'll leave that to Sting. Once again, see we forgive Sting, 'cause he doesn't have the context."

"That first McCartney solo record was an eye-opener. I was aware that The Beatles were breaking up and I was aware that McCartney was bringing out a solo record and, song after song it was, you know, decent! The production wasn't like Beatles production, but it was decent enough. The playing wasn't as good as Beatles playing, but it was good enough. Then I found out that he wrote, engineered, produced, played all the background - except Linda would show up here and there - it was a one-man band. I mean everything! Drums, keyboards, everything, then engineered it, then produced it, did it all. Unbelievable! He only had these four machines with these RCA knobs, very primitive equipment. It's a real tour de force. He's not a great guitar player, not a bad guitar player, he plays just good enough to be able to get those parts down. It just comes down to song writing. You've got 'Junk', or ""Maybe I'm amazed by the way you love me all the time"" - that could have been a Beatles song! There's another great story in how he and Lennon would work together and McCartney would bring songs to Lennon and Lennon would pooh-pooh them and one of those songs was a song called 'Woman'. McCartney brought it and Lennon said, 'That's not great'. So then McCartney said: 'Look I'm going to prove it to you, I'll give it to Peter and Gordon and they'll have a number one record.' Lennon purportedly said, 'Yeah, but that's because your name is Paul McCartney.' And McCartney says, 'Okay I'll change the name to Bernard Webb', and, sure enough, he gives it to Peter and Gordon and... number one. He did it again with Badfinger, brought in another song that Lennon purportedly said wasn't good enough, called 'Come And Get It'. I mean, what the fuck is it? Anyway, another number one song."