I really think it's a white, bourgeois idea to pretend that you don't have influences. It seems to be the obsession strictly of white people in college.

I grew up in the suburbs and basically associate the suburbs with cultural death.

I'm not going to die glamorously. I'll probably be eating a Twinkie, take a bite, and fall over.

I think when I listen to old records, it puts me back in the atmosphere of what it felt like to make the record and who was there and what the room looked like. It's more a sensory memory.

To me, music was about being accepted and escaping from this crummy existence.

I was trying to be this person who is cool, eternally rocking.

If you don't fit into this kind of like gossipy, trendy, Web-hit thingy, you're relegated to sort of second-class celebrity status.