I'm always working on my own music, too. I've been working on a record for a few years.

Whatever you do has to be commercial and it can't be too distracting - it has to be background music, basically.

It's so easy to criticize your own time, and I see that as a problem, even for myself, as a listener.

No one should drive a hard bargain with an artist.

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

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.