Of the 25 songs we've recorded there were 24 that we wanted to have on an album. That wouldn't have worked. So when one of our wise managers suggested the idea of considering two different album, it cleared the way for us.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
When I think about putting together an album, the process of listening to hundreds of songs each time and picking out the best 10 or so that will go on the record, it really sinks in as to just how many songs I've listened to all these years.
Probably the reason it's a little hard to break away from the album format completely is, if you're getting a band together in the studio, it makes financial sense to do more than one song at a time. And it makes more sense, if you're going to all the effort of performing and doing whatever else, if there's a kind of bundle.
I'm sick to death of people saying we've made 11 albums that sounds exactly the same, Infact, we've made 12 albums that sound exactly the same.
I think that the idea of having a different approach to every single one of my albums is so exciting to me. I never want to make the same record twice. Why do it? What's the point?
But to put out a greatest hits on one CD was totally impossible, I just couldn't do it. The best compromise was to put out two CDs - Early Days - which is what it is - and Latter Days.
I hadn't been a recording artist all that long when albums came on the scene, and I was one of the first singers to point the way to how varied an album's contents could be.
It's a shame in a way that people come and go with one album.
Our albums just tend to be collections of songs really, because we all write in the group, all four of us.
I like to come up with lots of different sounds. So the final version of a song might have been 10 completely different songs before we finally got it right.
We toyed with the idea of making it a double album, but I think that would only have confused everybody even more, so we decided to stick with the songs we picked.