This month I was lucky enough to be in the house band for Hal Willner’s Jarvis Cocker Meltdown festival. The 3–hour show consisted of Disney classics reinterpreted by a host of guest singers. As is often the case with Hal, it was a hugely ambitious undertaking and brilliantly chaotic. There were only two days to rehearse. I turned up on the first feeling slightly nervous and set about trying to tune my hurdy–gurdy quietly, which is impossible. Then it was straight in at the deep end, with sheets of music flying at me in quick succession from each of the three arrangers who were putting the whole thing together. Their diverse characters ranged from New York firebrand jazz legend to gentle Tokyo classicist. As the second day drew to a close I was happy because I was getting to play loads of accordion, hurdy and guitaret, and we had managed to get through most of the set. Only one problem – so far hardly any of the singers had bothered to show up. Then with half an hour to go Grace Jones, Shane MacGowan, Pete Doherty and Kate Moss all walked in. We cancelled our taxis. Pete Doherty ran through his song then came over and said he liked my guitar. I handed it to him and he started playing a beautiful, much more effective version of the song we’d been doing, which Hal heard and told him to do at the concert. The next day, at the RFH, charts were still being handed out and music being rehearsed an hour after doors were supposed to have opened. As time ticked on Grace announced that she wanted a special riser brought on. As she prevaricated and time ticked away, I looked over at Hal. He was rubbing his hands together and smiling. As for the concert itself, there are too many highlights to mention really. It was enough of a thrill to be playing with such great musicians and a proper orchestra. But piling through “An Actor’s Life For Me” with Nick Cave was pretty memorable. Now and then in the unwanted gaps between songs one of the arrangers would come over to me and whisper urgently, “play something!” so I had the brief honour of improvising hurdy–gurdy to a packed RFH. Another time I found myself duetting on accordion with David Coulter’s musical saw. I kept expecting someone else to come in but nobody did. It was an incredible evening and I learnt a lot from Hal’s method of creating magic, which seems to be assembling a load of talented people for an unlikely cause, lighting the blue touch paper and retreating.

One of the performers that night, Baba Maal, invited me to play on his album the next day. When he had come in to rehearse, he initially found it hard to lock in with the quite rigid confines of the arrangement. I got to know exactly how he felt when I walked into his studio and found his band in the kitchen playing music that I loved but had no idea how to fit in with. In the end John Leckie the producer was looking for an entirely different flavour for the song, and the evening turned into quite a normal overdub session. I was also briefly in the studio with Ed Harcourt, working on some bonus tracks for his upcoming best–of. The tunes, as ever, were beautiful and we’ve known each other so long the parts were down in no time. A few great Ed moments too – when he walked in he hurriedly unpacked all his latest musical toys, and finished off by triumphantly producing a giant Indian headdress, saying earnestly “I thought we might need it”. He also insisted on speaking to me between takes through a vintage mic and amplifier with reverb, at huge volume, hiding underneath the mixing desk. The fabulous–sounding 60s American amp I brought along electrocuted me, the producer, his assistant and the technician. Lastly on the studio front there were an other few days in Belfast with David Holmes, doing the last few tracks for his long–awaited album. This time I brought Jon Hopkins with me, who brings an elegant magic to everything he touches.

A couple of festivals this month. Firstly the Isle of Wight, where I played alone on a little bandstand. I was glad to be there and had a great time camping, but the gig rather made me want to never do anything like it ever again. Then Glastonbury where I played with Ed and then The Waterboys. I’d never played with The Waterboys live, but Mike Scott invited me to join them for the songs I did on the album and it was really exciting to headline a stage, and come on with no rehearsal (except 10 minutes in a van with Mike). The mud was quite extraordinary, and only bearable when viewed through an alcoholic haze. I was pathetically underprepared too, arriving with binbags tied round my legs. By the time I’d found a place selling wellies I had sacrificed 2 pairs of shoes to the quagmire.

Two days later I found myself in New York taking out my mud–splattered pedals in the David Letterman studio. It was a strange juxtaposition. Letterman keeps his surprisingly small studio extremely cold – so much so that my fingers went numb (good thing I was playing slide). Once again the entire thing felt rather impromptu, being shoved on with minimal rehearsal, and all over in 5 minutes. It was only when I watched it back that it really clicked that I’d been on Letterman. One minute he was rabbiting away, then he said “Bryan Ferry”, and the next thing I saw was me! After that I stayed in New York for a couple of days to make a video for the first single off my next album with Bingo Gazingo. I took him to Central Park and round the East Village and filmed him accosting members of the public with his poetry. For an 82–year–old he has such incredible energy, and it can’t be because of his diet (ice cream and milkshakes, half of which end up down his shirt). One of the many highlights was when he stood in the middle of a playground and bellowed “I wanna put my iTube in your YouTube!” I also interviewed one of the other singers, Phoebe Legere, in her extraordinary apartment full of art, clothes, and fallen masonry. It is the only place I’ve ever been which one could describe as being ’littered with accordions’. She gave me raspberries and told me to sit out on her rusty fire escape (5 floors up) while she did the interview with the cameraman (she didn’t want me to hear).

Finally, yesterday I did the Diana tribute concert with Bryan. Surprisingly little to report, except that mercifully Wembley Stadium doesn’t seem quite as huge when you’re actually onstage. The only thing that threw me off were the troupe of models sachaying right over my pedalboard during the intro, which certainly didn’t happen at the runthrough. It was also eerily quiet onstage, adding to the unreality of it all. I just kept thinking “God knows when I’ll make it back here again, just enjoy it! Enjoy it!” and tried to balance the tragic desire to look vaguely ’stadium–y’ with trying not to play any wrong notes during the solos.

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.