The years keep going by and you realize, Wow. Doing these records is such a process: going on tour for a year and a half, then you get home and you want to do other things.

There's 40 or 50 songs that nobody's heard that I've done in between albums. There's a whole evolution from Midnite Vultures to Sea Change that's never been released.

Anything goes. You always find interesting things that way.

If someone is making a judgment when they don't have firsthand experience, it's intolerant. How can you make a judgment on something you don't know about?

There are certain records from the 80s and early 90s that you love because the songs are great, but you don't go to them as an example of great production. Over the last 20 years, myself and a lot of other musicians my age have tried to discover things in 50s, 60s, and 70s recording techniques that were lost or discarded. We've all been trying to crack this code. It's been an important period in the last 15 years, reclaiming some of those lost approaches to making records.

I didn't want to do something typical.

I think my whole generation's mission is to kill the cliche.