I've thought many times, 'I can't write this,' but on my own little planet I found the courage to write it because it was true. I put aside fear of Father being angry with me. It's hard though; the world pales in comparison with the stature of a parent. In some small-consolation way, my parents feel I'm helping people by giving them something to identify with. They feel proud in a sort of reverse way. My mom's proud of the fact that lots of kids look up to me.

I rummage around in artistic things from the past. If you don't understand the context, they wouldn't make any sense. I rummage around in conceptual ideas of the future, but if you don't know the source of the thinking, [it] wouldn't make any sense.

Around the mid-'90s every hair guy who would have been in a hair-metal band got his tattoos and suddenly decided he was alternative. It just became like a thing.

When alternative music - which is supposed to be the standard-bearer of where white rock is headed - becomes either too cute or too manufactured, that's just really not good.

Usually the intention of the artistic effect is too sophisticated for most people to understand, sort of like a joke that they don't get so they don't think it's funny.

I know how stupid people can be. I've played in front of 5,000 people that bought a ticket to my concert, and some guy who's bought a ticket decides he's going to throw a bottle at my head. That's a simple act of stupidity. That's not even defiance.

It's wonderful to read interviews by old blues guys - they talk about all their influences, they talk about who taught them how to play, and who they saw, and how they were determined to play that way.