I’m definitely responsible for coming in with some basic chord changes, or ideas. Everybody in the band looks to me to come up with the basic seed, so it’s not very productive to come in with nothing.
I don’t think I’m before my time, I just don’t think I’m in my time.
I think when I listen to old records, it puts me back in the atmosphere of what it felt like to make the record and who was there and what the room looked like. It’s more a sensory memory.
I want to be able to look back and think that as long as I was going this, I did the best that I could.
I think God is the most unexplored territory in rock and roll music.
I’ve had a lot of things rendered as not being effective or as some indication of my lack of sanity, only to be praised ten, fifteen, twenty years later for what I did once in this overt consciousness.
I don’t think people are fans of me because I wrote hit songs. I think they’re fans because I’m a lunatic or a weirdo. The hit songs came out of my idiosyncratic personality, not the other way around.
I use music as some kind of weird salvation to get away from life.
Usually the intention of the artistic effect is too sophisticated for most people to understand, sort of like a joke that they don’t get so they don’t think it’s funny.
We don’t make music for people to take drugs to, we make music for people to live their life.
The closer I get back to being who I really am, the stronger the music gets.
People act like Nirvana invented grunge; they just took it and personified it.
I’m by nature kind of a glum person, but I’m not a sad pathetic.
I’m not going to die glamorously. I’ll probably be eating a Twinkie, take a bite, and fall over.
It seems to me that references to bands like Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin meant more to me a year ago and all those old things are totally losing importance.
Being in a rock band is just an excuse not to get a job.
I’ve rarely done anything that’s overtly self-destructive without consciously knowing what I’m doing. And then of course, the astute journalist jumps forward and says, “Why are you being calculated?” Calculated seems to assume a sinister intent. My intent is always for artistic effect.
I want to make great songs.
All humans are part male and part female. The other side must be explored to gain complete understanding ofourselves and the world we live in. Forme, the idea of having a feminine perspective is a willingness to be vulnerable.
I’m like the Fugitive, running from the one-armed indie-rock community!