Q – I’ve noticed in concert you often to abbreviated versions of songs, leaving out the middle sections, viz Cut me Down etc..
In there a reason for this? I’ve often thought you write pretty good middles, esp in the aforementioned song which has a great lyric..
A – Almost none of the songs in my set were written with an acoustic arrangement in mind, so most have had to be reinvented in some way. Sometimes this is natural and easy, other times less so. If the songs feature sections which are difficult or impractical, or just awful on the acoustic guitar I have, on occasion just left them out. Not much point having an instrumental section where the solo was, if there is no solo… I don’t think that there are actually many middle 8’s other than Cut Me Down that have been completely removed (correct me if I’m wrong – I’m not keeping notes). Regarding that particular section I must beg to differ – It think it is one of our weaker moments (not to mention sounding like Bryan Adams) and I don’t miss it for a minute.