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Bob Dylan is quite a songwriter, and a great singer and musician. I won't bother with comparing myself to him, but I will say that I heard his records at a very young age and I still listen to all his records.

Music was so important to the culture when I was growing up in the Sixties and Seventies. We just expected that Bob Dylan was going to make a great record, and it was normal. It was like, 'Okay, here's another great record by Bob Dylan; here's another great record by Led Zeppelin.'

Second records aren't usually very good. Even Bob Dylan's was a bit disappointing.

Bob Dylan was the source of pop music's unpredictability in the Sixties. Never as big a record-seller as commonly imagined, his importance was first aesthetic and social, and then as an influence.

I think everyone mentions Bob Dylan, but he's someone I just admire so much as a songwriter. I think people write songs, and then there's Bob Dylan songs. He's one step ahead of just everybody else.

Bob Dylan did the first really long record - Like A Rolling Stone - I think it was four minutes.

I think I'm the oldest new Bob Dylan around. I predate Bruce Springsteen, Steve Forbat and John Prine. I was probably the first of the new Bob Dylans.

I was one of those guys, you know, playing and singing, and there was no reason for me to write a song, because there were so many beautiful songs out. And Bob Dylan was always the ultimate songwriter, and nobody could ever write a song as good as him, and nobody ever has written a song as good as him.

'Record Without A Cover' was about allowing the medium to come through, making a record that was not a document of a performance but a record that could change with time, and would be different from one copy to the next.

Normally when we go in and write the songs we write, we think about doing a cover, but never a covers record. That would be, for us, a concept. We don't want to have a concept!