I think the whole '2112' album took somewhere around a week to do.

People are getting away from the whole album experience, it's true. I think that's sad. Maybe I'm just saying that because I'm an old fart. But I can't help it - albums are what I grew up with, and I still love them.

I think we're quite unique in that we do have our own sound and approach and we don't really care what's going on elsewhere... we've never wanted to be part of another trend or movement.

Rush has never been a spontaneous group. We may be spontaneous in our writing, we may be spontaneous as individuals in our day to day lives... certainly I think am and always have been, but I think when it comes to Rush and our presentation of our music it's quite controlled.

I think that's given inspiration to other musicians. I know, particularly through the 90s, a lot of bands would cite Rush as an influence. I don't think it was so much our music, but more the way we really stuck to our guns.

The more I got into playing guitar, the more I enjoyed music, and the broader my listening became. The instrument itself became important to me, and I started messing around with classical guitar and took classical lessons.