It takes a long time to find your own voice. Along the way, you imitate all the things that influence you - in my case Johnny Cash, Bowie, John Lydon.
Making a record with 'Depeche Mode' is not a simple process. It's quite complicated and long. We have the luxury of time. I'm not sure that's such a good thing when you're being creative.
I always played around with writing songs, but when you're spending a lot of time in bars, you have a lot of big ideas, but you don't do much with them.