Since coming back from the tour I’ve been getting back to what I ike best – tinkering around in the studio. The Brian Eno/Herbie Hancock collaboration is going well; we added some spoken word elements and Arabic percussion, and I’ve been editing and arranging in preparation for further sessions in January. One day at Brian’s studio we got distracted by a clip that I shot in Australia of a Koala scratching its bum. Brian noticed that it looked as if the koala was playing air guitar, so we spent a happy hour putting a soundtrack together and uploading it onto Youtube – here

 The tour itself was, as ever, a combination of euphoria (amazing places, good friends, music) and bullshit (politics, hanging around, gruelling travel). On the last night of the tour Guy Pratt and I decided to go out and buy the cheapest guitars we could find, play them on the last song and then trash them onstage. In Cash Converters the shop assistant eyed us mockingly and asked, “Starting a band are we?” to which Guy replied, “No – finishing one”. The depraved act itself was incredibly cathartic, fun and symbolic in a personal way. Although for a few hideous moments it looked like the guitar wasn’t going to break.

 I’ve had a couple of sessions, for the amazing and up-and-coming Florence And The Machine, and the rather more established Tony Christie. I got to try out my beloved new acquisitions – the Bandura (Ukranian giant zither) and the Guitorgan (demented 60s guitar with an organ built inside of it). The combination of working on great music and at the same time seeming to make people happy is so special, and that is why at times like those I love my job so much.

 Lastly I’ve been continuing work on my folk album, The Grape And The Grain, adding the aforementioned new instruments and writing the last few tracks. Having not listened to any of it for a while, I was relieved to find that I liked everything more than I remembered. It’s interesting the way new tracks shed a different light on older ones. Although with the increasing decimation of the album as an art form I doubt the idea of context has as much relevance as it used to. 

I am on a plane to Australia. Probably should be trying to sleep, but being unwilling to medicate myself into inertia with free booze I’m doing this instead. It is the last leg of the Bryan Ferry tour; last week we were in Russia and Eastern Europe (fact: Vilnius in Lithuania is the only town in the world with a statue of Frank Zappa). I contracted some kind of weird muscular flu in my arms and legs, which meant I could hardly manage pull my shoes on let alone play the guitar – which made the gigs a bit of a struggle. It also put a crimp in the sightseeing, so I spent most of the days productively, editing stuff for Brian Eno. He did some jams last year with a group made up of Herbie Hancock, Squarepusher, Jon Hopkins and Steve Jones. The tracks are all over 30 minutes long and, though featuring many moments of demented genius, consist mostly of highly confusing (though terrifyingly proficient) arsing about. My job was to get them down to 6 or 7 minutes each, in order to send back to Brian and Herbie for further development. Instead of trying to make remixes with my stamp on, I wanted to keep the spirit of what was happening in the room – imagining how it would have been if everyone could read each other’s minds (or even just hear each other properly – according to Brian it was difficult on the day). There is a lot of humour in it, I’ve taken out much of the noodling, and I’ve never heard music quite like it before. God knows when or how the project will be finished, but I’m continuing to work on it.

I’ve been with Brian for the last 3 days working on the music for a film. He, Jon and I sat round in his studio improvising, and it was one of the loveliest sessions I have been involved with. I used to improvise with Jon back at school and we seem to have a real affinity. He is an extraordinary player who seems able to conjure actual colours out of his keyboard when he plays. Brian is a constant source of completely unexpected ideas – sometimes beautiful, sometimes violent, sometimes funny. The ‘pieces’ morphed from atmospheres into seemingly fully-realised compositions. We had a loosely enforced ‘3 minute rule’, where instead of meandering on, after 3 minutes something had to change. On the last day Brian tried a different approach, guiding us with chords he had written on a huge board and pointing to different ones in turn, composing as he went along. It was fascinating, moving and as always with Brian, simply great fun.

I recorded with a new artist called Florence (project name: Florence And The Machine). It is like a cross between Amy Winehouse and the White Stripes, in the best possible way. Produced by Steve and Ross who I met playing in Jarvis Cocker’s band, the sessions were a scream, mainly because of the wonderfully eccentric Florence herself. She brought with her a large tom-tom (which she claimed to have been practising for 2 weeks) and used it noisily and systematically to punctuate every line not only of what she sang, but also of what she said, for most of the two days. The recording method was refreshingly old-fashioned, with the 4 of us sitting in a large room and doing everything live. The sound was absolutely brutal. After playing back one of the songs to her manager (which ends with a wall of guitar mayhem), Florence pointed triumphantly at me and said “Can you believe all that noise came out of a nice young man like that?!”

Perhaps the highlight of the month though, and one of the highlights of my career really, was a concert at the Barbican called ‘Plague Songs”. Organised by David Coulter, it was a night of songs inspired by the Biblical plagues performed by a huge cast of artists including Rufus Wainwright, Patrick Wolf, Imogen Heap, King Creosote, Damon Albarn, Sandy Dillon, Roger Eno and The Handsome Family. I was in the house band, which was made up of some truly legendary musicians, many of whom I grew up listening to on my favourite Tom Waits records. A bizarre assortment of instruments littered the stage - musical saw (David is the world’s greatest saw player), alto flute, ondes martinot and crystal bachet among many others. We only had 2 days to get a 2-hour show together, but it was a breeze. The exception being Damon’s piece, which was rather tricky timing-wise. When all attempts at explaining it failed, he turned to me and said “You’re just going to have to follow me like a whore basically”. Too many highlights to mention; apparently there might be more concerts on the cards and I do hope so – it was amazing to be involved.

So… back to the 17-hour flight, perhaps a glass of red after all, and Die Hard 4.

This month started off with a session for a cat food commercial, during which I had to make miaowing noises with my slide tube, to coincide with the lucky feline’s face looming into view. While I was there, for good measure, they got me to do some morris-dancing music too. It was all surprisingly satisfying, requiring a certain amount of precision and a quick response to demands - everything in that world has to be done at light speed, and I left the building feeling pleasantly like a professional musician.

I have been working quite a lot with Brian Eno, helping him out with a really exciting collaboration which he probably wouldn’t want me to discuss. But it involved my taking the master files home, tidying them up, adding drums and guitars, and bringing them back for further tweaks. He has so much amazing stuff milling around in relative chaos on a multitude of hard drives, and today I took away another load of stuff which I shouldn’t mention, to try and edit into shape while I’m on tour next month. Watching him apply effects to a sound is a fascinating experience. He does all the things that a trained engineer would recoil from and deem ‘wrong’ - things most people would not even bother considering. But it invariably comes out sounding marvelous, and typically ‘eno’. And he is just such a sweet, kind , funny (and yes of course, that dreaded word - interesting) man. I also never tire of witnessing him build up his trademark wall of vocal harmonies - no headphones, wandering around the room in front of the speakers projecting his benevolently manly, and above all English, voice.

Apart from that, and quick sessions for Jon Hopkins and David Holmes for their new albums, I’ve been working on a new record - The Grape And The Grain - a follow-up to Honeytrap on Just Music. It has been really hard going, and at one point I nearly deleted the lot, despairing of it and having consulted colleagues and girlfriend with fairly desultory results. But at the last moment I decided it was worth a final effort, and I spent several days locked in my basement studio with only a hurdy-gurdy and piano for company. Eventually things started to come back to life and now, with the sage advice of my dear friend Steve, and a few tracks duly culled, I think things are back on track. For me the lesson has been to not play anything to anyone until it’s ready, and also when things are slightly crap, to admit it to myself instead of trying to hang onto what few good bits there are. And above all it’s been great to be able to spend so much time on my own music, especially when the rest of the year is now spoken for.

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.

On the Eurostar, pulling out of Paris. I’ve been working with Brian Eno on the music for a ballet by choreographer Philippe Decoufle. Some of that involved responding to the dancers and visuals which was inspiring and very fluid, but at other times we had to work on headphones and try to ignore everything around us. It was pitch black, stiflingly hot and poor Brian’s computer kept crashing. But we did quite a few good pieces from scratch and for me it was a complete privilege to be involved in a project like that. Brian is so fascinating to work with. A lot of the things he plays sound almost comical on their own and then suddenly there appears a fully–formed, incredibly original and cool-sounding track. Also we’ve worked together long enough now that I can quickly gauge what he wants, and correctly interpret guidelines like ’A bit more sour alien funk’.

Last week was Ed Harcourt’s UK tour, with a 7–piece band. It was quite emotional playing his music again. It has been the intermittent soundtrack to my life for so long and I care about it, and him, very much. Ed is always fantastically ambitious and this tour was no exception, teaching 4 new band members his entire canon in three days and littering the stage with countless instruments. The finale involved both the support bands coming on stage to do rousing backing vocals. Every night I could hardly sing them myself because I was so choked up by how wonderful it all was. On the last date Ed gave everyone a Mister Man book. Mine was Mr Skinny.

Previous to all that were a few festivals with Ronan Keating (at one of which I did my first bungee jump) and a gig with Bryan Ferry, which was a benefit for the Countryside Alliance. I wrestled with my conscience over this one as they always seemed like bloodthirsty loonies to me, but on closer inspection of their literature I was slightly reassured. Then from the stage I spotted one of the stewards wielding a large pole with a stuffed badger impaled on the end of it. I decided to donate half my fee to the League Against Cruel Sports.

A few days after that was my first proper rehearsal for the Roxy Music tour. My role seems to be supplying lots of the strange textures and parts on the albums. Bryan has a reputation of being difficult to work with, but that is not the case at all. He knows what he likes, and is not afraid of telling you what he doesn’t, which is extremely useful. At one point a look of deep worry changed into one of childish joy as I edited a sound to his specifications. ’Oh, this is going to be really good’ he said. I got bashful and said ’I aim to please’. He shot back with ’Good, I aim to be pleased!’ I burst out laughing. He didn’t.