Q: You were touring with TOOL?

RF: Yes.

Q: Do you have interest in contemporary rock bands and in any way have they influenced your work in the new album?

RF: The quick answer is yes. I'm interested in the work of other musicians. I personally prefer to see them live, and that makes it more difficult because unless one's resident in a city centre where there's a lot going on. One tends to miss a lot of it. But I was nevertheless listening to TOOL records in the basement in Nashville, where I work with Adrian Belew, while writing the music for The ConstruKction Of Light.

Am I influenced by the people I hear? I hope so. And the people I meet? Yes, I hope so too. I hope I register everything. The direct causal relationships are sometimes a little difficult to trace. For example, I might be more influenced by how a guitarist puts on their guitar, than how they play it or what they play. Now how to actually trace that is the difficult thing. For example, I once asked John McLaughlin (I flew to Paris to interview John when I was a contributing editor to Musician magazine) and asked him what was his interest in Sri Chinmoy. John said I wanted to see how he poured a cup of tea. Now, I understood exactly what John said. At least I believe I do. So sometimes I'm more interested in seeing how the guitarist puts on the guitar than what they actually play.

With regards to TOOL... actually TOOL do happen to be a favourite band of mine, but I don't generally comment on who I like because it leaves out everyone else, and the suggestion might then be that doesn't Robert like them as well. So, I make no further comment on that other than TOOL are wonderful characters. Adam asked me do you hear the King Crimson influence in TOOL? and I said "no, not at all". TOOL are more comfortable being TOOL than King Crimson is comfortable being King Crimson. It's in the nature of the band (KC) I'm afraid.

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