My guitarist Elliot came with me, all ready to work with his beautiful guitar ideas. When we walked into her studio in Burbank, forty-five minutes outside LA, we were stunned. It was impressive, with around fifty amazing vintage guitars in the live room. Elliot and I exchanged glances – what Linda didn’t know is that he is a left-handed guitarist, so he couldn’t play any of them. Ouch! That did not help the vibes.

In Mama Wild I learnt to step back and take a good harsh look at our songs, building up a mental database of what worked and what didn’t. If something shined I needed to know how and why, and if it blew chunks I needed to know the size and flavour of them. I’d think about the audience, and try to imagine what the girl in the third row was thinking. Being objective is hard, but sometimes you get close enough to weed out and reject your worst ideas, leaving room for better ones to grow. There is no quick way to being good – it’s a long road.

No matter how excited I am about a new song, the best test is to play it in a room to other people and feel their reactions. Unless they’re in the music business, it’s difficult for them to put into words what they think. I read people’s body language, like when they look up and smile and start tapping a toe or, conversely, when they fiddle with an arm-rest or look around the room for help. If they pick up their phone mid-chorus, I know I’ve lost them, it’s over – throw that song away! In the very early days, when people didn’t know my voice, I’d play tracks in the background with friends in the room to see if anyone started nodding along. I did that when I was living in the housing co-op in Brixton, and when I was DJing at parties – a cute, sneaky way to see if I was on track.

The stuff in the window was so outrageous that I hung around on the pavement outside for ages, trying to pluck up the courage to go in. Once I did, Tommy Roberts was so friendly and enthusiastic that he talked me into buying a selection of clothes not even Tony King would have countenanced wearing in public. Wearing them, I felt different, like I was expressing a side of my personality that I’d kept hidden, a desire to be outrageous and over-the-top. I suppose it all went back to chancing on that photo of Elvis in the barber’s in Pinner when I was a kid: I liked that sense of shock, of seeing a star who made you wonder what the hell was going on. The clothes from Mr Freedom weren’t outrageous because they were sexy or threatening, they were outrageous because they were larger than life, more fun than the world around them. I loved them. Before I went onstage at the Troubadour, I put them all on at once. So instead of an introspective hippy singer-songwriter, the audience were greeted by the sight of a man in bright yellow dungarees, a long-sleeved T-shirt covered in stars and a pair of heavy workman’s boots, also bright yellow, with a large set of blue wings sprouting from them. This was not the way sensitive singer-songwriters in America in 1970 looked. This was not the way anyone of sound mind in America in 1970 looked.

I’ve been a professional musician for my entire adult life, but I’ve never got bored with playing live. Even when I thought I had – when I was playing the cabaret circuit with Long John Baldry, or in the mid-seventies, when I was just exhausted – I obviously hadn’t. You could tell by the way I would grandly announce my retirement, then end up back onstage weeks later. Throughout my life that feeling I get before I go on each night, the mix of adrenalin and anxiety, has never changed, and thank God it hasn’t, because that feeling is fucking great. It’s addictive. You might get sick of the travelling, the promotion, all the stuff that surrounds playing live, but that feeling will always keep you coming back for more.

Jean is criticizing herself for doing something harmless while at the same time rebelling against doing the one thing she has to do to keep her medical license. She is proclaiming her innocence in regard to the opioid prescription but pleading guilty to watching too much TV. Things are all twisted, and I do my best to straighten them out. “There’s a big difference between turning off the TV because you are tired and turning it off because you are supposed to,” I say. Jean has every right to watch as much TV as she wants; it is her only pleasure these days, the only relief from the surveillance she is under. I continue to talk with her about changing the story she is telling herself, about treating this time as a retreat (with TV!) into which she can surrender. Surrender becomes a theme we can explore. Jean is a conscientious and experienced clinician. She is devoted to her patients, and she knows that clinical work is much more important, and meaningful, than the electronic medical records being demanded of her. But right now, for the next year and a half, the medical records have to have priority. Can she submit to that with patience? Can TV be her reward? Or will her sense of the injustice perpetrated upon her paralyze her even further?