When Nirvana became popular, you could very easily slip and get lost during that storm. I fortunately had really heavy anchors – old friends, family.
I taught myself how to play the guitar, I taught myself how to play the drums, and I kind of fake doing both of them. But drumming comes more natural to me, and it just feels better.
The whole slacker generation totally didn’t apply to us musically.
When you’re recording to tape, you usually just settle for what you have. There’s not a lot of options to manipulate the performance.
I think musicians like me are drawn to those older desks, not just because they’re legend and lore but also because they do something really specific that is hard to emulate or re-create digitally.
Different boards do different things to the sound that’s coming through them. An old Neve desk does embellish it in a way that makes it sound sort of bigger or warmer. It doesn’t change the performance but it does enhance the way that it sounds.
It’s funny, there aren’t too many musicians that also moonlight as studio engineers. There’s a few – the really brilliant ones.
You can make yourself the greatest singer in the world or the best drummer in the world with the aid of technology.
A place like Sound City, which was just a big, beautiful room where you would hit record and capture the sound of the performer – a place like that isn’t necessarily in demand anymore.
I believe the history of American music is just as important as anything political because it’s changed generations of people.
The Nirvana unplugged album was something we’d always knew we were capable of doing, but it was just a matter of doing it right.
Once I got into punk rock, I started mail-ordering albums, because a lot of the record stores in my area didn’t carry the punk bands from England or Sweden or Chicago or Los Angeles.
I like the rock documentaries that make it seem real. Some rock documentaries are meant to make the bands look larger than life.
There’s nothing better than having a bottle of beer in your hand in the waves.
In a way, as much as we love to be a big, loud rock band, the acoustic album was a lot easier to make than the rock records. I think because it was brand new territory for the band.
When I sit down to interview people, I don’t hold questions and I don’t know the answers. They’re more like conversations that become lessons.
Most of our songs were written on acoustic guitar before they made it to the practice stage.
Rock stars are like sports stars: If you snap your ankle, you’re done.
A long time ago, I made a promise to myself: “Okay, you know what? I’m going to play music, and hopefully I’ll make enough money that I can go back to school. Once I make enough money to put myself through school, that’s what I’m going to do.”
Neil Young is my hero. You know what that guy has been doing for the past 40 years? Making music. That’s what that guy does.