The last few days of September were taken up with sessions for Herbert Gronemeyer, a huge star in Germany but perhaps better known over here for his role in the film Das Boot. His writing process is extraordinary – the music comes first, and he scats nonsense words over it in rough English which leads to some very amusing working titles (I was relieved to discover that ’Naked Love’ would one day be changed). Nothing strange about that, most people evolve lyrics this way, but at the last minute with all the instruments recorded he writes completely new lyrics in German! It’s actually a bit odd playing with no clue what the song is about, and made me realise how much I subconsciously try and respond to lyrics. Herbert is very warm, clearly extremely intelligent, and somewhat impish. The German drummer was utterly silent the whole first day until 11pm when, after we’d done about 10 takes of the same song, the last few of which had broken down into ’joke tango’ versions, suddenly screamed at the top of his lungs “Aaaaaarrrrggghh! Stop that fucking polka shit!” He opened up after that and turned out to be a very sweet man. The session felt a bit scary though for some reason. One of the great things about the job is that every time you walk into a new situation it can feel like your first. But I usually prefer to play in the control room so that I can get a picture of the whole sound, and here I had to be in the live room on headphones that didn’t work too well. And when you have to communicate by shouting through a talkback at a reflective piece of glass, both producer and muso can come over as awkward twats. But it was all fine in the end.

Then I had a couple of days overdubbing on the new Waterboys album. Mike Scott sent me an incredibly sweet email in advance, referencing specific sounds on my own records that he wanted me to emulate. He is so inspiring to work with – very gentle but firm about getting the right take, and unable to sing at anything less than 100% intensity. You’ll ask him to show you how the bridge goes, he quietly obliges by reaching for an acoustic, then he opens his lungs and becomes a complete rock star. Every time I played something he particularly liked, he’d say “ooh, you’re a villain!” in his indulgent Scots brogue.

After that came a couple of private shows with Bryan Ferry. One was in Hong Kong, to mark the reopening of the Mandarin Hotel, essentially playing in the lobby. We were there for 5 days and it was more like a holiday really. I tried particularly hard during the gig in an effort to justify the whole thing to myself! Also performing was Dame Edna Everage. She struggled a little with the rather humourless ex–pat audience. Afterwards she made a beeline for my friend and I, with a cry of “Ah! Young people!”. I kissed her hand and asked how she found the performance. She grimaced and said, “A bit difficult to be honest, a lot of inscrutable people”. I arrived back in London at 9pm and had to go straight back in with the Waterboys at midnight! It felt quite rock and roll. The next day we (Bryan and band) went to Stockholm to perform in front of the King and Queen of Sweden. A massive gala dinner, from which us humble minstrels were kept well away in a most heavy–handed manner (I was actually grabbed at one point on the way out of the loo). The highlight for me was playing with the other guitarist Chris Spedding, a complete legend who has worked with just about everyone and plays like a rockabilly demon.

While I was recovering from delayed jetlag, I did a gig with Ed Harcourt. It was my birthday and I could think of no better way to celebrate than by playing wonderful music with great friends. Ed got the crowd to sing me happy birthday which felt lovely, but seemed to last a miniature eternity. This week I finished off mixing the Bingo Gazingo record. Mixing is not my forté by any means, but I think I’ve done it justice. Mixing on a computer is a bit of a misery, so much peering and clicking. I also worked on the soundtrack to a computer game with Brian Eno, which consisted of him sampling some of my laptop guitar sounds and playing them on his sampler. It made me want to do a whole record that way. But everything had to be very concise because there is only a limited amount of memory available in the game – which is an interesting condition to have imposed on you! Brian likes that kind of thing though. One sound turned out particularly well and he said it made him want to dribble.