I know my own limitations. And if somebody says, "I need songs for a cartoon garage band - they look like this and they should sound like this," it gives you a direction. I like having that kind of assignment.

I think trying to be offbeat is the most boring thing possible.

Somebody else is satisfied by five Bentleys. I'm satisfied by a beautiful string arrangement.

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.

In Japan, you get on the bullet train or the airplane, and I loved the little speeches the stewardesses would do. They even do little speeches before you play gigs.

You spend so many months and years in the studio, and you see the clock ticking and so much time spent on the minutiae of technical things. And I just thought it'd be fun to do something extremely fast and get that rush of something that had some energy, something that you weren't tired of when you finished it.

I have for four years now been ringing the bell. Economic Holocaust is coming. Economic day of reckoning is coming.