Most groups, I think, would have been taking their foot of the gas at this point. But we have the exact opposite instinct. We are flooring this rock 'n' roll band, and we're just interested to see where we will end up.

Weirdly enough, if I'm having trouble with a guitar part - not the playing of it but the writing - I'll mess around with echo and other effects, just turn everything up and make it as crazy as can be, and it winds up taking me somewhere. I've found so many guitar parts from echo. It's limitless.

Jazz came out of New Orleans, and that was the forerunner of everything. You mix jazz with European rhythms, and that's rock n' roll, really. You can make the argument that it all started on the streets of New Orleans with the jazz funerals.

A trumpet sounds pretty much like a trumpet, and that's true of a lot instruments; pianos sound like pianos, but there's something about the guitar - the range of possibilities is much broader.

We want this record to be something that people really listen to, rather than just have in their record collection.

One of the good things about globalization is it has created a single international music community, and I feel very much part of it.