I didn't begin to mature as a person until I started travelling. I can remember studying an atlas as a child and thinking it would be impossible to visit all those places. But when Let Love Rule [his debut album] came out in 1989 my whole life opened up. Travel can teach you so much.
I am the sort of person who will dive straight in when I visit a place. After the end of my tour in 2007 I stayed on in Brazil for six months and bought a farm. I just know when I connect with a place. Today it is a working organic farm where we grow vegetables, fruit and coffee.
After this tour I would love to take a year off and visit places I still haven't seen, such as Vietnam, China, India and the South Pacific. Ninety five per cent of my travel is linked to work so it's rare that I will go somewhere for myself. I want to travel on my own terms. That is a luxury for me.
The first place I visited as a musician was London. I stayed in a B&B on the Portobello Road and hung out at the flea market and a Malaysian café under the train tracks. I still meet up with friends from that trip. I recently returned to Notting Hill because my daughter, Zoe, was filming in the UK and staying in a mews apartment in the same area. I love London. If my schedule is clear next summer, I'd like to attend the Olympic Games.
I live in hotels when I'm working so I have a good idea of what makes for a perfect stay. It is really about the service but you need a room to be comfortable and personal. I want it to feel like a home. As well as my music career I also have a design company and I'm currently working on a condominium in Miami and the interiors of several suites for a new hotel in South Beach, designed by Philippe Starck.
If I could only live in one place it would be the Bahamas. As well as the associations with family and childhood — my mother's family come from Nassau — it has the most beautiful water I have ever seen. The pace of life really suits me. I'm just a local there and I love that.
