Even when I was a mailman. That job required no great skill, so once you got it down, you had a lot of free time to daydream and make up songs.

I went to Ealing Art School, in London, the year after Pete Townshend left. Music was a sideline to everything we did, and the school was a breeding ground for musicians.

Life is a journey that's measured not in miles or years but in experiences, and the route your life takes is built not of roads but of songs.

Especially when you've got your own mail route, day after day, it was an easy place to write. It was like going to a library with no books. You're afforded to just go do your job, and you don't really even have to think about it. You know you're on the right street and you're at the right house, and you're putting the mail in the right box. That's where I wrote a lot of the early songs, walking on the mail route.

My dad knew I was mad about music. While he worked as a barber he would hear songs on the radio and we'd have endless discussions about them. So I got my first record player when I was 11 years old.

Gospel music was the thing that inspired me as a child growing up on a cotton farm, where work was drudgery and it was so hard that when I was in the field I sang all the time. Usually gospel songs because they lifted me up above that black dirt.