[Dave Stewart, Location]

Dave Stewart: I think I can get very inspired in most places, in a taxi, in Bangkok, or halfway up a hill in Jamaica or in a freezing cold sort of stormy night Alaska, or in Los Angeles looking out the window at the Hollywood sign. I think it’s in you. Now, other elements can spark it off and it’s good ‘cause they add this kind of flavor to it. But there isn’t a place where I’ll say, “Well, I have to be there ‘cause that’s what inspires me.” If I’m sitting in front moving water because it creates some kind of impermanence, then that will make me write a different thing and tend to be more about impermanence or it doesn’t have to be so structured.

And if I’m in the middle of New York it might be quite sort of intense and kind of rhythm base at first, but basically after a while you just write anything anywhere. If you analyze it you see a lot of the bands that break, they don’t come from these places. Fransford and Ann recently, come from Edinburgh, which is gotten nothing to do with any of the music cities in England. And they got together and they had a little warehouse that they used put on these art parties and stuff. And Coldplay are from, I think, Cambridge or Oxford, outside of England, that had nothing to do with any music scene. Bob Dylan was from Hibbing or somewhere.

You tend to find that they’re not from the music scene places. And a lot of people in the music scene places are kind of repeating what other people have done, so they’re more involved with fashion and copying and that’s never gonna be. Then at the forefront, because you have to be away from that to be unique.