Ryan Adams on birthdays, F Scott Fitzgerald and Willem de Kooning...

Legend has it another concert-goer tried this trick around the same time, and Ryan's reaction was to ask the heckler up on stage, where he gave him the guitar from around his neck.
Such contradictions seem to run through everything the man does.
As he explains in great detail during our interview, he hates the idea of being famous and has gone to great lengths to avoid the obvious pitfalls of celebrity.
That is true, to an extent.
The sales of 2001's Grammy-winning album Gold could have propelled him into mega-stardom, but he dug his heels in, and followed it up with a collection of sketchy demos 12 months later. It was as if he was trying to alienate the fans who'd bought into his music.
A couple of years ago, however, he dueted with country star Willie Nelson in a TV commercial for uber-brand Gap which was shown around the world, and until recently, he was signed to Lost Highway, a subsidiary of Universal, the world's largest record company.
Adams's contradictory nature displays itself in the volume of his output, too.
Since splitting from alt-country band Whiskeytown in 1999, Ryan, whether as a bona-fide solo artist or with current band The Cardinals, has released 10 studio albums, not to mention the scores of songs he put on his website under various pseudonyms.
He's also produced a number of albums for other artists, including friend Jesse Malin, and written a book, Infinity Blues, due for release next year.
When it's put to him that he's prolific, however, the 34-year-old shakes his head in denial.
"No. No, it's not prolific," he says, beginning what turns into a 10-minute long rant on the subject.
"It just doesn't fit into the ideas that corporations have instilled in the minds of record buyers in the last 15 years.
"They >fr 1,8fr 3,8< can maximise their profits by over-advertising artists, over-working them, touring them on specific albums and never letting them graduate, artistically.
"By the time it's right for the band to produce new work, they've forgotten how to be musicians and are basically just walking billboards for a very silent corporation that was running them around," he continues, exasperated.
"It's not what a painter is, so it shouldn't be what a musician is.
">fr 1,8<20th-century Dutch abstract painter>fr 3,8< Willem de Kooning didn't make 'a' painting, and then go walk around holding it for three years.
"Imagine if he had have done, and then someone said 'Hey Bill, here's some red and orange paint, do something.' He'd have forgotten how to experiment with colours and shapes, and we wouldn't have had his greatest work.
"I'm not prolific, I'm just not a sucker," he says, finally.
We're in Adams's hotel room - it's his birthday, although he doesn't really celebrate it. When he entered the room, he was embroiled in an in-depth conversation on his mobile.
He then turns his attention to berating F Scott Fitzgerald for being "The most overrated writer, ever. His work isn't even fit for reference."
Adams has tried to read the author's Great Gatsby four times but believes it to be terrible literature.
As he talks, he's hugely animated, and divides his time between bouncing around a large sofa, hunting high and low for an ash tray, filling said ash tray with discarded cigarettes and picking at some food that's been delivered.
Not that you'd know it, but for most of our chat, he's flanked by two of his band members, Neal Casal and Brad Pemberton of The Cardinals
The band first backed Ryan on his 2005 double album Cold Roses, and have since played on Jacksonville City Nights, released that same year, 2007's Easy Tiger (although they weren't credited on the sleeve to Adams's anger) and now Cardinology.
"I'm just in the band," he explains, referring to his plan to dispense with his name in the band's moniker. "It's not my group. I'm one fifth, and I'm only going to be participating one fifth.
"At some point, if I want to bore everyone to death for 11 songs on my own, I'll do it, but from now on, we're just The Cardinals," he states, definitely.
Cardinology, the band's latest offering, was recorded during a "two-week or so" period in New York earlier this year, and carries on perfectly from where previous album Easy Tiger left off.
Almost universally praised by critics, Adams, Pemberton and Casal each describe it as a stepping stone toward the sort of thing they might achieve together over the next few years.
For the moment, at least, there's no other way Adams wants to work.
"My old songs are decent," he says, modestly, "but they're not great.
"When we write collectively, as The Cardinals, we write great songs, way better than anything I could have come up with on my own. I know which I'd rather do.
"I don't want to write Come Pick Me Up >fr 1,8fr 3,8<. It's not a classic, it's as good as someone at the age I was when I wrote it can be.
"What we do now is easy too, because we work so well together. We go into the studio, make the songs and then adults and college kids across the world can steal it from us on the Internet, and then we go on the road to support it," he says, only half-joking.
"We'll make more and more, and there are subtle hints on Cardinology to what we're going to become.
"My old records are OK, but this is what's happening now."