Katie Alteri: What is different for you performing at a university in comparison to when you’re on a major tour?

Ed Sheeran: Structurally, you guys have your own infrastructure here, like your students were helping our load-in this morning and backstage is run by the students, and it just seems like more of a community than when we are on tour. It’s usually like venues are owned by people, and they employ workers and stuff.

KA: Last night you were in New York hanging out with Rick Ross, and tomorrow you’ll be back on tour with Taylor Swift. How do you find your own free time, and what do you do when you have time to yourself?

ES: That hasn’t presented itself anytime this year. This year has been all about work. I’ve got three more Taylor [Swift] shows and then I go home for some time off, so I don’t really know what I’m going to do. All of my friends are finished university and they have all moved back home, so I’m going to catch up with them for a couple of months and then record the rest of the album and start it all again next year.

KA: What has it been like touring with Taylor Swift?

ES: It’s been amazing. I think the combined audience for the whole tour is like 1.2 million people, and that just blows my mind that you can play to that many people. It was a great opportunity.

KA: What’s the best and worst thing about being on tour?

ES: I find myself not finding anything negative in my job, because I think when people have jobs there is always stuff that you don’t like, but if there is a job that you enjoy, that kind of outweighs everything. So there aren’t really any negatives about being on tour. You are obviously away from home for a very long time but I enjoy, I really enjoy playing, I really enjoy seeing all different parts of the world, getting inspired, it’s a great job to have. So I don’t find any negative aspects to it, obviously there are, I just kind of blow them off.

KA: I saw you perform last year in Philly and know that you got your Fresh Prince of Bel Air tattoo. Are you planning on getting a tattoo while you are here?

ES: We don’t have enough time here, sadly, because I was in New York this morning. If I had woken up in Delaware I probably would have.

KA: What’s your favorite tattoo that you have?

ES: Probably this one [Sheeran points to a tattoo on his arm, which is French painter Matisse’s sketch of a mother cradling her baby]. It’s called Matisse, it’s a mother and child and I just like it because it’s simple.

KA: Will you be playing any songs from your new album tonight?

ES: No, no. I tried out a bunch of them in sound check. I have written them, I just haven’t worked out properly how to play them live. I’m getting there though, I’m getting there.

KA: How is this album going to be different from your previous one?

ES: I wrote most of the first one when I was 17, and I’m 22 now and then I’ll be 23 by the time the album comes out, so I guess six years more of experience in songwriting and playing live, and I think what I’ve learned from touring with someone like Taylor [Swift] is CD sales are 6 percent of a musician’s income, which is nuts, like the rest is live. So do not make an album to try and smash the charts or get played on radio, just make a record that you really are going to enjoy playing live because it should just be an advert for your live show. The songs are not necessarily massive pop smashes, but I don’t think that’s a good thing to try and emulate anyway. I think just make music that you are really going to really enjoy playing, so I try to do that.

KA: How do you find the inspiration for your songs?

ES: This album has been a lot of relationship troubles I guess. The first album I was inspired by everything that was around me, I was kind of growing up surrounded by a lot of very interesting people and had a lot of stories such as like “The A Team” and “Small Bump” and stuff like that. This record there has been more drama that has happened in my personal life, so I’ve written a lot about that.

KA: What has been the most memorable moment of your career so far?

ES: I’ve had a really cool career so far, I’ve done some really cool things. One of the most random ones actually was I went for lunch with Peter Jackson who did the Lord of the Rings films, and he took us into his warehouse of film memorabilia that he’s been collecting. As a film geek, it was just really cool. He had costumes from all these different films, and like Jurassic Park…just everything, he had the Thunderbirds dolls, so yeah that was a cool experience. I wouldn’t say it was the coolest of the career, but personally, I enjoyed that quite a lot.

KA: With you being from England and doing a lot of things there, how do you see yourself now? Do you still identify more with your British fans or are you emulated into the American culture?

ES: I think the way British people do music is very unique. I think definitely I’m still very British, and I think that’s what Americans buy into. I think trying to please an American fan base wouldn’t work for me or them.

Källa