The weird nihilism that permeates Mellon Collie is extremely relevant to what's going on right now. So many kids are intelligent and articulate, but they don't know what to do with themselves.

James, that's a bad situation. I'm not saying it's not repairable, but it's pretty far. When you go from being in one of the best bands in the world to some cover band... as far as I'm concerned, he was playing down at the pub.

I work differently than most people.

I'll come in with a string of riffs and direct the musical ideas. But you still need a band and their input to make the ideas come alive. You can't underestimate band chemistry.

We need to get back to a level of social responsibility that we haven't seen for a long time.

People act like Nirvana invented grunge; they just took it and personified it.

We don't make music for people to take drugs to, we make music for people to live their life.