Some loud thunder

Musical maverick Mike Scott is still living in a hippy-happy state of marital bliss in a spiritual community on the North East coast of his native Scotland. While this is undoubtedly fine and dandy for the Waterboy-in-chief, it's not such good news for your Hot Press reporter.
For reasons not really worth detailing here (save to say that there's an unhelpful little man in the Galway Fastrack office whom I'd happily shoot), I didn't get my hands on my advance copy of Book Of Lightning - the Waterboys' first studio album in seven years - until shortly before this interview.
Two quick listens had led me to the erroneous conclusion that this was another Bring 'Em All In (his hugely confessional 1995 solo album detailing the break-up of his first marriage). Lyrics like, "She tried to hold me/She tried to hold me/She didn't know/That love is letting go" seemed to hint at trouble in his house of love.
Elsewhere, his mournful delivery of the lines, "It's a strange arrangement/I don't claim to understand it/I know I created it/But I never planned it" sounded like divorce-talk - to my tender ears, at least. Needless to say, I was wrong. Sometimes a song is just a song.
Recorded in London last Autumn, Book Of Lightning was produced by Scott and Philip Tennant (who last worked with The Waterboys on Fisherman's Blues and is currently managing the band). A natural successor to their classics This Is The Sea, Fisherman's Blues and A Rock In The Weary Land, the new offering features the distinctive electric fiddling of long-term Waterboy Steve Wickham.
The rest of the line-up is a mix of the old and the new, featuring regular keyboardist Richard Naiff, Louisiana-born drummer Brady Blade, London drummer Jeremy Stacey, bassman Mark Smith, guitar stylist Leo Abrahams, and long-time Waterboys alumni Roddy Lorimer (trumpet), guitarist Chris Bruce and the wonderfully named Thighpaulsandra (keyboards).
Together, they've created a real electrical storm of a record, not so much a giant leap forward as an amalgamation of all the best bits of the Waterboys impressive and eclectic musical CV.
As it happens, I knew him a little, back when he was living in Galway in the late 1980s. Just not personally. I was a barman in the Warwick Hotel, and Scott and his band of merry men would occasionally drink there.
He hasn't touched a drop of alcohol in many years, but tells me he remembers those Warwick nights well.
Undoubtedly it's the booze-free lifestyle but, at 48, he's looking remarkably fresh-faced and healthy. He may have left the 'Big Music' behind some years ago, but the big hair remains. It's streaked with Druidic grey, but his eyes are bright and alert.

OLAF TYARANSEN: So is Book Of Lightning another Mike Scott break-up album?
MIKE SCOTT: Oh, do you think so? [pulls mock-shocked face] I hadn't thought of it like that!
Erm... I'm just looking at the track listing - 'Love Will Shoot You Down', 'Nobody's Baby Anymore', 'She Tried To Hold Me', 'Strange Arrangement'.
It's not a relationship song, 'Strange Arrangement', but it could be. Well, you obviously took it that way. But it's not an autobiographical song. I would describe it as a figurative song. It's not like a still-life, it's more of an impressionistic song. It's about a guy who has probably got a bit of me in him, who has made compromises and finds himself becalmed in his life.
That one aside, are many of your songs autobiographical?
A lot of them are, yeah, but certainly not all of them. There are some autobiographical ones on this album, but not all my songs are. Often I just write something, and I don't know who or what they're about. They're just songs.
Do they come to you?
Yeah. Sparked perhaps by a title or a phrase or I might just be strumming a guitar and something jumps into my mind.
Do you always carry a notebook?
I always have paper and a pen. I don't actually carry a notebook, but I'll always have a sheet of paper in my pocket. I'll write stuff down and when I get home I'll download it from there into a book.
Some songwriters spend years crafting and rewriting lyrics until they're happy, while others dash off fully finished songs in a matter of minutes. Which kind are you?
I work both ways. I've written songs that took as long to write as it takes me to actually sing them. And I've written some songs that have taken me 20 years, working on them on and off. In fact, there's a couple of them on this record. The last track 'The Man With The Wind At His Heels', I began writing that at the beginning of 1986, when I first moved to Dublin. I remember it was one of the constellation of songs that was around the band at that moment in time. But I was never happy with the lyrics. Over the years, I kept going back to the song, changing a word here or a line there. But I was never quite satisfied with it. But on this album, I finally got it. So I recorded it after almost 21 years.
Actually, I took that as the end of a cycle of break-up songs on this album, with the character washing his hands and walking away at the end...
Aha! Well, it's fine to interpret it like that, but it wasn't intended like that [laughs].
Shit! There goes half my questions! Do you always know what your songs are about?
Yeah. Often I do. But sometimes I don't, Olaf. 'The Man With The Wind At His Heels' began or actually came from a phrase. I love the title. I have to say that it was stolen - or borrowed [laughs]. It was used by the poet Paul Verlaine - one of the very super hip French poets of the 19th century - to describe the poet Arthur Rimbaud. He called him the man with the wind at his heels because he could never stand still. And I just loved that phrase.
And when I began writing the song, I just thought, 'Well okay, there's a day to be a merchant, there's a day to be a commentator and there's a day to keep the home fires burning, but there's also a day to have the wind at your heels'. A day when you're moving so fast, nobody can catch you. Which is perhaps the way I was living at the time I began writing the song. And then certain things that I've been observing in the last year or so - in the political life of Britain. Especially Mr. Blair and Mr. Blunkett - that wonderful clown David Blunkett. And they came into the song. The misfortunes that were befalling them helped me find the last couple of lines to finish the song. And the line "the clown in his winter mind with his loathsome ordeal" is about David Blunkett. This guy who had a sort of moral superiority that was completely blown by the things that happened to him and by the way he responded to them, which I thought was fairly undignified.
Do you remember Blunkett's response to a prison riot around that time? He told the prison officers to mow the rioters down with machine gun fire!
Yeah! How about that? Could be a little power crazed [laughs].
Incidentally, have you seen that episode of Father Ted where Graham Norton murders 'The Whole Of The Moon'?
It was wonderful! I loved it!
I presume they had to ask your permission to use the song?
No they didn't, no. I wouldn't have objected anyway, I would've said, 'Yeah!' I loved it. I also loved when he [Norton] was singing 'Dirty Old Town' with a finger in his ear. Brilliant!
Where are you based these days, Mike?
I live in Findhorn (a spiritual new age community on the coast of north-East Scotland). My wife and I bought a house there in 2002. She used to be a member of the community there and she used to lead holistic workshops. She was a group leader. And she wanted to get back into that. We'd been in London for six or seven years together and we were ready to leave. And for once in my life, there was nowhere I was burning to be. There was no new place I was trying to get to. So I just said, 'Okay, if you wanna go to Findhorn, let's go back.' And it's great. Although we're ready to leave now. Time for something new again.
Do you have any kids?
No, none.
Was that a conscious decision?
No, it's just the way it worked out.
It probably wouldn't have been easy with your wandering lifestyle. . .
Yeah, I'm glad I haven't had kids - for that reason.
Going back to the new album for a moment, the title Book Of Lightning is quite biblical sounding.
Do you think so? [horrified] Gosh! I never thought of that. If I'd thought of that, I wouldn't have used it! Ooohh, that's horrible! Oh God! I see what you mean, though. It's like the Book Of Jeremiah or something. Oh God! You know, it was just a phrase that I had up my sleeve. I needed a snappy title for the album. Actually, I wrote a little short story for the sleeve for the CD booklet for when the album comes out that includes the phrase 'book of lightning'. That should put some flesh on the bone, as it were. But other than being a title that I felt suited the album, there's no masterplan linking it to the songs.
But do you write much fiction?
I do write a bit, yeah. I haven't published anything yet, though, except for some nonsense on the internet.
Have you ever considered writing a memoir or an autobiography?
I've thought of it. Or maybe just using some episodes from my life as material for a book. But the idea hasn't landed yet. I've got some things written that could be ready to publish. I'm slowly working up to it, but I haven't set on a course of action yet.
I noticed that there's lots of weather imagery scattered throughout the songs.
Yeah, weather imagery [nods]. I just like that. I like music to sound like the weather. When I made the This Is The Sea record, the beginning of 'Don't Bang The Drum' with the trumpet intro and that [hums opening of song] rumbling guitar sounds to me like an approaching storm. And then the storm breaks when the band kicks in. So I love that.
And when the trumpets come in on 'The Whole Of The Moon', for example, it's like a sudden sunburst with the clouds parting and the sun streaming through. The elements... yeah.
Are the lyrics as important to you as the music?
Oh absolutely. I wouldn't say either is more important, but one feeds the other.
In the past, you've recorded a couple of songs of just one or two lines, repeated like a mantra...
Well, there's a deliberate reason for that. It's so there's no escape from the idea that I'm sending out in the two lines. "I'm gonna look twice at you/until I see the Christ in you" [from Universal Hall's 'The Christ In You']. I don't want the listener to escape that idea so I keep hammering it home again and again. So the listener has to respond to that idea - they've no choice. It was a phase I went through of these little mantra type songs.
Have you ever tried Buddhism?
I've done some Buddhism meditations, and there's something clear and honourable and straightforward about Buddhism that I like a lot. But it's never attracted me to become a practitioner. Although the Dalai Lama would be one of my heroes. And I know lots of Buddhists at Findhorn.
Are you a vegetarian?
Vegetarian - but I eat fish.
Is that a long-standing thing?
About 14 years. From the early '90s.
Didn't you give up booze in the early '90s?
I did, yeah. And smoking. Still off.
So what's your poison these days?
Coffee [takes an exaggerated sip] Ah... deadly!
Presumably you spike your coffee with Findhorn's finest shrooms from time to time?
No. I've never taken hallucinogenic mushrooms in my life. I've never taken acid.
Really? I would've thought that experimenting with consciousness expanding drugs would have been a part of your spiritual questing at some stage?
No, you see I don't actually agree with using drugs for spiritual questing. I think they're only applicable when they're used in controlled circumstances by native communities who know from centuries of experience how to process the results. Like the American Indians with peyote, for example. But I think in Western culture, using drugs as a way to open your consciousness is a shortcut that doesn't work. Because opening the consciousness needs to be accompanied by the appropriate lessons. Otherwise the consciousness doesn't stay open. So people who took acid in the '60s, for example, yes, they had a massive consciousness expansion, but they didn't know how to process it. That's why you've got all these drug casualties. I'm not interested in shortcuts, I'm only interested in the real stuff. I'm only interested in actually earning the expansion of consciousness by the life lessons that I go through.
What's your channel to God, then? Abstinence? Music?
I'm trying not to see God as a separate thing. Certainly music, and absorption in music, is a way of having a spiritual experience for me, and always has been - without me thinking of it as a spiritual experience. And it's the same for anyone.
How do you mean?
Anyone who absorbs themselves in their work can have a spiritual experience doing it. And there's nothing other-worldly about it. It's not something you can only have on the top of a mountain. You can have it right where you are. It can be everyday. And should be. We are spiritual beings, it's a part of our genetic make-up. So to answer your question, I try not to think of God as something separate and out there. I think God's inside everyone. And it's not a case of separation.
Somebody once wrote that we're not human beings on a spiritual journey, we're spiritual beings on a human journey.
Yeah, and I agree with that. It's nice, isn't it?
I wanted to ask you about your memories of Mic Christopher [who died following a fall in Groningen, Holland, while supporting the Waterboys on their 2001 European tour]. Were you aware that he became posthumously famous over here?
Mic? Had he become famous in Ireland?
Yeah, Guinness used one of his songs in an ad that ran for months.
Which song? Was it 'Heyday'? That was a great song!
How well did you know him?
I hung out with him a little bit on the tour. A tour isn't a great place for getting to know someone because we're all hurtling around under a lot of pressure. But I caught his show a few times. I actually picked him to do the support. I think Glen Hansard sent me a letter that said, 'How about my mate Mick?' And someone sent me his EP. I thought it was deadly. It was one the one with 'Heyday' on it, and 'Looking For Jude'. I thought those were great songs from a great singer. I remember I had dinner with him on the night that he went out and fell down the steps or whatever it was. I hung out with him one day in Bristol, I remember. That was quite good fun. But I hardly knew him. He was in his coma for several weeks of that tour. As a band, in The Waterboys, we - em, there's a term we use in Findhorn - we kind of 'held' him. We held him in our communal or our group awareness. And every night after the show, we'd come together as a band and we'd invoke the energy that we'd generated with the audience during the show and we'd send it to Mic. It didn't work. Or maybe it worked, but he had another destiny.
Are you a believer in destiny?
Actually, no, I'm not a believer in destiny. I believe we have free will and we can choose our road. Maybe I should have used another word. He'd a different destination. Maybe it was just his time.
Not to harp on the subject, but you knew Nikki Sudden pretty well, didn't you?
Twenty-five years ago. I played on his album Bible Belt in 1982. I played on three or four tracks. I produced and co-wrote one track, and played lead guitar on it, and I played piano on a few others. We were big mates for about a year when I was living in London. And then we lost touch, and I didn't see him for years and years and years. And then last year he got back in touch with me - by the magic of email. He was writing his autobiography and he wanted to check some facts with me. And I have this annoyingly accurate memory, especially for dates and years, so I was able to correct some things for him.
Were you shocked when you heard that he'd died?
I don't think I was that shocked, because Nikki lived that hedonistic lifestyle. He lived by it and, although I'm not sure it's that clear how he died, perhaps he died from it too. Although it's the way he would've wanted to go - after a gig in New York City! I was very grateful I got to be in touch with him shortly before he died. Especially in such a cordial way. It was a really loving email correspondence.
It was a coincidence him getting back in touch just before he died.
A similar thing happened with Kevin Wilkinson. He was the Waterboys' original drummer. And he killed himself in 1999. Just shortly before that, we played together again. And I was so glad to be reunited with him and get the chance to play with him again before he popped off. That was very shocking, that he killed himself. In fact, I was due to do a session with him, and his sister - who I'd never met - phoned me up and said, 'I'm Kevin Wilkinson's sister'. I was wondering why she was ringing me and I knew immediately that something terrible had happened. And it had.
Have you seen many rock & roll casualties over the years? Do you hang out in those circles much?
No, I plough my own strange furrow [smiles].
You've somehow managed to stay out of the tabloids and gossip columns, despite your fame and success.
I'm an odd combination. I like dressing flash and I like going on stage and throwing shapes, but I'm also very private. I'm a very shy person.
Do you get recognised much when you're out and about?
I actually quite enjoy being recognised on the street. Generally, people are really nice. I was in Venice on holiday and a Corkman came up and asked me for my autograph. A Cork accent addressing me in an alleyway in Venice. That was very nice, and he was so charming. So it's cool.
You described Dublin as "a city full of ghosts" on Bring 'Em All In.
Do you know, it was to me then but, boy, I love being back in Dublin. Every time! It's just great!
I was chatting with Vinnie Kilduff last night, and he told me that when he toured with the Waterboys you all used to play literally everywhere - airports, buses, hotel rooms. Do you still do that?
We do it a bit. But there aren't so many trad players in the band these days. There's Wickham, and I'll play my guitar anywhere [nods over at guitar leaning against the bed]. So there's two of us. But during that marvellous raggle-taggle golden age, there was Vinnie, there was Sharon Shannon, Colin Blakey - it really was like a rolling session.
Would you be into those days coming again?
Oh I would, yeah! Wickham and I have this long-standing plan to do a Rolling Thunder type tour, and get all our friends who're in bands to do a revue-sized show. Get Sharon Shannon on the bill, and so on. Steve Earle was another name we thought of. But just to get something like that on tour and then we all play together at the end. Get that spirit going again. We'll do it one day.
How does it feel to be back with a major label?
Good. I liked being on my own label too. There was a lot of freedom in it. Although, even on a major label, I'm used to doing my own thing anyway.
Is it true that releasing A Rock In The Weary Land almost broke you a few years back?
Well, I put a lot of money into the A Rock In The Weary Land album. I paid for that recording myself. But then that went with a major label, too.
I don't think of myself as wealthy.
But you've done some major deals in your time?
Well, the big record deal that I did was the Geffen one in 1991 or 1992 or whenever that was [for a reported $2 million]. Although, there's a funny story about that. I did the Dream Harder album, which was a Waterboys album, and then I made the Bring 'Em All In record. And I knew I wanted that to be a Mike Scott album. It was a one-man album, it didn't feel right to put it out under the Waterboys name.
It was a very personal album as well...
Yeah, I thought it was appropriate to stand under the name Mike Scott. But Geffen didn't want me to do that. And I had to take a cut in my advances of a million dollars to get them to put it out under my name. And then I actually bought the record back from them as well. First, I took a cut and then I bought the record back. My lawyer was working very hard at the time [laughs].
Going back further, you've had your starving artist days.
Yeah, sure. I had to sell my record collection to make the next gig. I remember being on tour with my old band Another Pretty Face in 1980. We got the support tour with Stiff Little Fingers, but we lost our record deal. I remember that the first gig of the tour was in Liverpool. And we'd just enough money to pay for the petrol to get to Liverpool. The next day, we had to drive to Bournemouth. And we had no money, so we had to sell one of the amps to put gas in the van. I laugh now, but it wasn't funny at the time. We all smelt bad as well. Nobody had any money for laundry, and our socks were humming up the van something awful. Stiff Little Fingers rescued us. They gave us back our tour support. I'll never forget that. Good lads! First thing we did was we went to a bank in Bristol, got some cash out and did our laundry [laughs].
Do you rate any Irish bands of the moment?
I'm friends with a lot of Irish musicians and I stay in touch with them because they're my mates. As for new bands, I'm probably out of touch. I liked David Kitt when he came along, I loved that first album. I played that until the CD wore through. But apart from that, I'd probably be out of touch.
Who are you listening to generally?
The Stones, Sly and the Family Stone, Marvin Gaye, Kate Bush, The Beatles - these are the things in i-Tunes that I listen to again and again. Odd things like Steve Reich. Hank Williams. Oh, I recently discovered a terrific British singer-songwriter called Freddie Stevenson. Really, really good. He plays with The Only Ones - 'Another Girl, Another Planet' - do you remember that song? They were a terrific band in the late 70s and their guitar player plays with this Freddie Stevenson guy. I've discovered a lot of musicians through MySpace. I love MySpace. It's great for networking. Great for finding players. I've even found players for the Waterboys album through it. I found a great drummer.
Are you a techno-savvy kind of person?
Not particularly, but I love email. And I love iTunes.
What are your thoughts on free downloads?
I think it's good to have an energy exchange. People are going to get the music, so it'd be nice if they give some energy the other way. But, you know, like most musicians, the thing that we want is for people to hear the music and respond to it. We want people to love our music like we loved music when we first got into it - or even now. So financial reward is a secondary consideration - for me, certainly. At the same time, without getting some financial income from my songwriting or from my records, I wouldn't be able to live. I'd have to get a day job, and then I wouldn't be able to make records and I wouldn't be able to go touring. So there needs to be that as well. Something I do like with YouTube and MySpace is the frontier spirit. My record company will probably be really pissed off with me for saying this, and I know they've got issues with MySpace. I'm with Universal and there's something going on with MySpace just now. But I do love that we can put up videos on MySpace and I don't have to ask anybody's permission or deal with any of the publishing. I can just stick it up there. It's brilliant.
Going back to the new album, is there a theme or is it just a collection of new songs?
I didn't set out to make an album with a theme, but when I look at the album and I scan my eyes over the track list, I realise there is a theme. And it's a theme of how deeds are connected to comeuppances, or actions are connected to reactions.
Reaping what you sow?
It's exactly that. And the characters in 'Love Will Shoot You Down' and 'The Man With The Wind At His Heels' are people who've put some chains of circumstances into action and it comes back to them, and they have to pay for it. So it's very much a karmic thing. Also, it's dealing with judgement. I began writing 'Everybody Takes A Tumble' in 1986. I could've put it on Fisherman's Blues. We never recorded it because I didn't have the lyrics finished. Finally, twenty years later, I finished the lyrics. And I put it into the live set and it worked out so well, we recorded it for the album. And I was listening to it recently, because I had to edit it for a single. And I was saying, 'how am I gonna edit this? It's seven minutes long!' I tried all these variations and I couldn't get it right. And then suddenly I realised that if I take this bit out and stick that bit there, I'd get it right. And when I finally had the single edited, I listened to the lyric and I thought, 'at last, I know what this is about!' I'd never known what the song was about.
Which was?
I realised what it is: the guy in the first two verses, he's new into town, and he's saying, 'You'd better not mess with me because I'm bad news and you're gonna come a cropper if you mess with me'. And then in the third verse, the perspective widens: 'The devil drives a hard bargain/preacher burns his hands'. We're looking not just at the narrator, but we're looking at the wider scale of things. And innocence is gone: 'Huck Finn just went out for sticks/and he ain't coming back'. We're in deep waters. And then in the last verse... "Sinead O'Connor is guest of honour/And The Blades are gonna play..." Yeah, the month I came to Ireland, that's the scene in Dublin. Phil was MIA. The day I arrived in Dublin to live, he [Phil Lynott] died the same day. It was on the news on the radio when I was driving in, in the taxi from the airport, with Wickham. But the last verse we're in a judgement free zone. I can't really put it into words, but I understand the song now. It's like nobody should be judged. It doesn't matter what mistakes we make, we're all really doing the best we can with what we've got at the time. Even people who do terrible things. According to their own life, they actually think they're doing the right thing.
Which brings us back to the likes of Bush and Blair...
Yeah. They certainly think they're doing the right thing. We may not, but they do. It might be based on fear or it might be based on misconceptions, but they think they're doing something honourable.
Are you politically involved in any way?
Oh God, no! I was a member of the Labour Party in 1983 for a year. Paid my subscription, never went to a meeting.
Do you play many benefits or support any charities?
We played some gigs for Greenpeace; we even played on the Greenpeace boat once, in Dublin, back in '87. I was very thrilled with that because we got Greenpeace on the front page of the Irish Independent - or the Irish Times, I can't remember which one it was - but it was the first time Greenpeace ever made the front page of an Irish newspaper. Back then in '87, Greenpeace was a cult thing. It wasn't part of everyday terminology. We even got Paul McGuinness and Bono down to that gig watching us, and turned them on to Greenpeace. And the next thing you know, apart from Amnesty International - which U2 were hip to very early, and a good thing too - but the next thing you know they're supporting Greenpeace. So it was great. Good that we played that gig.
Are you still in touch with Bono?
No, not for a long time. We were in touch about 10 years ago.
What do you think of his current activities?
I respect what he does. I'd probably agree with what he does more than I might agree with Bush and Blair. And I think the way he carries himself is very good. I think somewhere in the early 90s, he discovered the key was to make himself look silly with the funny glasses and so on. And that bought him the right to be as serious as he needed to be on the issues. Before he discovered how to be a clown as well, he was open to charges of being too earnest. He discovered this balance, and I think that served him very well. And he knows it.
How do you think you're perceived? There are elements of self-loathing on previous albums...
Oh no. I really appreciate myself!
Have you always done so?
No. The hard times I had inside myself, would've been in the mid-'80s.
Because of artistic frustration or lack of success?
Oh God, no. Em... my parents split up when I was 10 years old. And my dad left home without explaining. He never took me aside and said, 'You know I love you but I've got to leave home. And it's not to do with you, it's to do with your mum and me'. I never had that conversation with my father. And all kids who find themselves in a situation like that, not having the maturity or the experience to process the events, but still having to deal with it emotionally, come up with misconceptions such as, 'It must be my fault'. And I was no exception to that. And even though I couldn't articulate to myself that I was feeling it was my fault, those were my feelings. And so for a long time, I wondered, 'Well, what's wrong with me that my dad leaves home?' And it took me a long time to realise that was a part of my psychological make-up, and then to start healing it. And I don't think it was until the late '80s or early '90s - and especially when I started learning to observe myself through processes like meditation - that I really started working on this. And realising that, you know, I'm just a regular guy, and actually I'm a great guy, and I should appreciate myself because there's lots of wonderful things about me. Just like there's lots of wonderful things about everyone. And in the centre, I'm made of love. Just like every single human being - their centre is made of love. And I learned that somewhere along the line, and the world looked very different to me after that.
So you're very much at peace with yourself?
Well, there's still plenty in the world that cheeses me off. I know enough to know that, whatever the appearance of the world, everything's really okay. And everything is working to some plan bigger than I can see. But I don't know enough not to get pissed off about things. So I will get pissed off about Bush and Blair or invading Iraq illegally or whatever.
When's the last time you threw a punch?
That's a lovely question [long pause]. Ha, ha! I love that question. I'm just trying to think. I can remember one, but I'm trying to think if there's another one. It was the late '80s - but I'm not gonna tell you who or why!
Are you a pacifist generally?
No, I'm not actually. I believe in being robust with people that are behaving badly. I believe in not letting bullies bully, and not letting abusers abuse. But I also believe in taking a wide view of things and trying not to be judgemental. Paedophiles is an interesting one. It's a big issue, something that's come to the surface in the last 10 or 15 years. I know it's been a big thing in Ireland, too. It's a big thing in Britain. I have no direct experience of it, which may disqualify me from having an opinion, and that's fine. But I also have a thought about it. I think probably most paedophiles were abused as children. And that when someone abuses a child, they're creating potentially a new paedophile. And to deal with paedophiles, we have to look at that. And it requires a very wide understanding. I think really to deal with paedophiles we have to suspend judgement and stop thinking of them as monsters, and maybe think of them as little children who got fucked-up by someone else. It's a chain, it's a self-perpetuating chain. And as long as we classify them as monsters, we're not actually dealing with the root cause.
Pete Townshend got into trouble over that issue, didn't he?
He did, yeah. Now, he claims to have been abused himself and he was on the internet, he says, researching it. And I'd be inclined to believe him. I think Townshend's a real honest guy.
What were your thoughts on Saddam being hung?
Well, first of all, I think he should've been tried in an international court, in the Hague - a crimes against humanity tribunal. International eyes on it, and an international court. Not an Iraqi court. I also think he should've been tried for a much wider catalogue of crimes, rather than the specific Kurdish massacre that he was tried for. And I've seen some speculation that he was tried for only that because, if he was tried for other things, it would've brought up things that perhaps the Americans and the British - who armed him - don't really want to put the spotlight on. As for hanging him, well, maybe a Hague war crimes court would've come up with a different solution. Maybe they'd have put him in jail, which I personally would've been more comfortable with. And there's another issue about whether Britain should've supported him being hanged. Or rather, while we didn't support it - we didn't protest it either. We don't hang people any more. So there's perhaps a double standard at work. As for it being on the internet, it was just pathetic that that was allowed to happen.
When you say 'we', are you being nationalistic? Do you see yourself as British or as Scottish or as a planetary citizen?
I'm all of them. I'm a citizen of the world, but I'm British and I'm Scottish as well. I see no reason not to be all of those things.
Are you a fan of Gordon Brown?
No!
Do you have a personal motto for life?
I've got lots of guiding principles. Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you. I believe in the law of karma. The universe is like a great mirror. Everything you do comes back in exact degree. Might not come back in exact kind, but it comes back in exact quality and degree.
Everything?
Everything. Because ultimately, there is only one. The universe is one. I believe that's the secret at the end of all religions. There is only one consciousness and our separation is a handy illusion that let's us get through our day alright. And everything we do truly we're doing to ourselves because there is only one of us. And that's why it comes back on us exactly, because we're doing it to ourselves - or to our self.