The songwriter and author on finding fresh inspiration, oversharing and hanging out by Bryan Ferry’s pool
Your new book, The Sick Bag Song, started from writing down ideas, observations, memories – on actual sick bags – on a US tour to promote your 2013 album Push the Sky Away. When did you realise that these jottings could be a book?
There was certainly a point where I had to let go of the idea that it was just a really long song. Then I had to get over the particular hurdle of writing something that would open myself up to a certain amount of criticism, possibly. Because I’m stepping outside what I normally do, which is songwriting, into something that there’s a whole different critical approach to, which is poetry. I’ve always stayed away from poetry. Maybe I should stay away from poetry!
There are elements of memoir in there, but it’s a long way from a tour diary. Would you say that the Sick Bag Songit exists somewhere between fact and fiction?
Yeah, I guess. For me, it’s a character-driven story and that character is on some level a literary invention that just happens to be an ageing rock star on the same tour I’m doing. I feel I can stand outside that character and invent things for it to do, so it’s not like a confessional poem.
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