What is your favourite film and why? Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. I remember watching the whole evolution of the movie as a teenager. It's not just the movie, it's everything that went around it, the fact it was his fir
st independent, one of the lead actors taking a heart attack, the financing of the film going down, a typhoon blowing away the set, the whole idea of them going to Cannes and not having worked out the ending yet. It's the one that stays with me all the time.
The piece of music that means the most to you? If I had to pick an album it would be Dark Side Of The Moon because it has stayed the distance. If I were picking a track, I'd have to go with Joni Mitchell's 'A Case Of You'. It's the lyrics I really identify with. People often ask: 'What song would you have played at your funeral?' and I think it would be this. Or 'Chinese Café', I love the lyrics in that too. Again it's about that middle-age retrospective look and still being a die-hard romantic. The only other one I'd mention is Rickie Lee Jones' 'We Belong Together' from her Pirates album. It's one of those uplifting songs.
The best performance you've ever been to? Roger Waters. I saw him in Malta in 2006 on the Dark Side Of The Moon tour when he played the whole album. I'd never seen him before and we were slap bang in the centre, three rows from the front. It was like having your own private Roger Waters doing Dark Side Of The Moon concert. Ironically it was the day after Syd Barrett died, so there was a certain poignancy to it all.
The book you have read more than once? Michael Herr's Dispatches. It's a Vietnam War book, and it's got that Apocalypse Now vibe to it. It's the story of the journalists and photographers. I can remember when I was a kid watching the black and white shots of helicopters etc, and when I went out there I insisted on going down to the Rex and having a drink on the rooftop bar where all the journalists used to hang out. I read the very last page in the rooftop bar in the Rex Hotel in Saigon three weeks ago.
The fictional character whose life you'd like to lead? Dean Moriarty from Kerouac's On The Road. It's that never say die, never give a shit attitude – just taking life and letting life take you with no sorts of consequences. I only get brave enough to do that on rare occasions.
Your idea of classic TV? My idea of classic TV when I come back from a tour is watching an entire series of 24 or Spooks. I like the way they bring the fear into the house and appeal to all the conspiracy theories you hatch in your mind, then deal with them all in a very clever, calculated way and everybody's happy and safe at the end.
Your favourite work of art? Van Gogh's Wheat Field Under Threatening Skies . It was the inspiration for the cover of my Field Of Crows album. I saw it for the first time in Amsterdam in 1982. It was one of the last one's Van Gogh painted, and the road that goes through the middle of the picture is supposed to represent the journey through life to the dark clouds of death. The crows are supposed to be the harbingers of death.
Prediction for the star of the future? No idea. There are very few genuine stars kicking around at the moment.
The entertainment gadget you can't live without? My Nikon digital camera. I love photography. I use it a lot if I'm writing. It's good for when you get an idea, you just take a photograph and sometimes when you look back at it, it triggers what you were feeling at the time.
Essential website? My own, www.the-company.com, without which I couldn't live. The music industry has become a lot more personal now. When I started back in the early Eighties, you'd be in a country, do a couple of interviews, get a live review and an album review in a couple of music magazines, and then you'd disappear for two years. Whereas now they can find out what the set list was in Milan. The whole communication between the fans and yourself has completely changed.
Fish plays the Liquid Room, Edinburgh (0131 220 3234), on March 7. His new album, 13th Star, is released February 12
The full article contains 777 words and appears in Scotland On Sunday newspaper.
