It’s always a pleasure on a personal note for me to come back to Australia.
Writing screenplays makes me a better musician because it clears my head. After writing a movie, I go running back to music as fast as I can.
You write a scene, and it works or it doesn’t. It’s immediate.
God has matured. He is not the impulsive, bowel-less being of the Testaments – the vehement glory-monger, with His bag of cheap carny tricks and his booming voice – the fiery huckster with his burning bushes and his wonder wands. Nowadays God knows what He wants and He knows who He wants.
I’ve always worn suits. To me they’re a very practical kind of thing to wear. You put one on and don’t really have to think about what you’re going to wear.
I’ve watched ‘Oprah Winfrey.’ And I’m proud. I don’t care what anybody says! I don’t know whether I’ve watched it. I’ve been in the room while it’s been on.
Moving to the country is a very bold thing to do. You can have vague romantic notions about doing that, but in actuality, it can be a terrifying thing.
Musicians are at the bottom of the creative pyramid and authors are at the top, and many people think it’s unacceptable for someone to attempt to jump from the bottom to the top of the pyramid.
My muse is my wife. It’s not some vague thing that flutters around the astrosphere or wherever it is. Sometimes as a songwriter you need something to hang a song on, to give it some kind of presence and form. For me, Susie is that.
People often can’t separate, or can’t understand, that to be funny is to be serious; it’s a way of pulling people in and not scaring them off. I think a lot of the funny stuff, underneath it, there’s a deep anxiety going on.
The band is a living, breathing thing. It grows in the same way we do as human beings and if it doesn’t, it dies. It’s important to feed the organism, and one way of doing that is to set musical challenges that keep it alive.
The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It’s the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song.
The more settled I’ve become, the more problematic my characters have become. There was a period when I wrote sensitive and gentle songs and these came at a time when life was at its most destructive. I think you write about what you need, on some level.
There are methods to creating a mayhem that sounds different from your usual mayhem. Because mayhem and a heavy drum backbeat end up sounding like Green Day or something. But if you put a different beat within it to create some air and lightness, the chaos comes through better.
If you got a trumpet, get on your feet, brother, and blow it!
I’m not saying this in a condescending kind of way, but it’s quite simple: The making of America was a heroic thing. Australia has a much murkier, much more complex view of its history. It’s just full of all these open wounds we don’t really know what to do with.
I write a lot, and very often I write a couple of lines that are particularly revealing in some kind of way. And then as a few more lines get added and a piece gets added, eventually the song pretty much takes over and you can’t really find a way to change those things.
I was reading The Bible a lot through my 20s, mostly the Old Testament, just because I was knocked out by the language and the stories. I felt that the God being talked about there, who was this insane, vindictive patriarch – it was kind of thrilling, and titillated something in me at the time.
Despite what people might think, I’m not interested in being dark all the time. I’m actually searching for some kind of light, and I’m always very happy when I can achieve that.
The work ethic at art school is completely different than the work ethic amongst people who get into music. People who paint, it’s an honorable thing to spend all day and all night in front of your canvas – that is the romantic vision of the painter.