:: The hounds of winter ::

 :: I hung my head :: "What I'm saying is there are no accidents around guns. When the judge asks him what went through his mind when he held the gun, he says "I felt the power of death over life." There's a totemic magic attached to the gun that will almost create a situation where you have to use it, or you will use it by accident. And if you killed someone by accident with a gun, you'd still feel guilt."

 :: Let your soul be your pilot :: "It's a song about death, or dealing with death in a way that offers some sort of hope. I actually think it's quite an uplifting song - the intent is for it to be uplifting."

 :: I was brought to my senses :: "It starts as just a folk ballad, with just me playing the guitar and singing in unison, and that goes into a kind of Brazilian vibe. It's really about nature and accepting nature as not only a metaphor for your own life but as something miraculous in itself. I'm much closer to nature now than I ever was - I hug trees, I speak to the grass. It helps."

 :: You still touch me ::

 :: I'm so happy I can't stop crying :: "The song is about a father whose wife has left him for another guy and taken their two children. It starts off cynically, in the first two verses, implying that the guy can't really be happy. But after gazing at the stars one night he has a revelation about all life being connected and he realises that in a sense, he's supported by the universe. Now he can sing the song and mean it - he really is so happy he can't stop crying. So it's about a journey through pain to a new level of understanding and acceptance."

 :: All four seasons :: "The song is actually about my daughter, Coco, who is five years old and treats me like shit, and then the next day treats me like I'm the best thing since sliced bread - you can never predict what sort of mood she'll be in. So really it's a song about her changeability, her mercurial quality - she's a bit like me actually. I think I deserve her."

 :: Twenty five to midnight ::

 :: La belle dame sans regrets :: "There's a poem by Keats called 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci', which is, vaguely, the inspiration for it. I sang that song in French just out of perversity. It was a sort of bossa nova music and the obvious thing to do would have been to sing it in Portuguese or Spanish, but I thought it would really sound good in French. Pretentious? Toi? No! I learnt French at school - everybody did. Being pretentious means you're pretending you're something you're not, and in my case that's not true. I've always been true to myself."

 :: Valparaiso ::

 :: Lithium sunset ::

The Sting 's quotes are extracts from the Tour book.

 

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