My only general rule was to steer away from things I played with the band over the past couple of tours. I was interested in re-shaping the Rising material for live shows, so people could hear the bare bones of that.

The first day I can remember looking into a mirror and being able to stand what I saw was the day I had a guitar in my hand.

What excites me about a lot of the artists I love - and I realize, well, they created their own personal world that I could enter into through their music and through their songwriting. There's people that can do it instrumentally, like Jimi Hendrix or Edge of U2 or Pete Townshend. I didn't have as unique - a purely musical signature. I was a creature of a lot of different influences.

Dancing in the dark. Does fortune wait or just the black hand of fate, It'll take your God filled soul. Fill it with devils.

When I die throw my body in the back and drive me to the junk yard in my Cadillac.

Everybody's got a hungry heart.

And at the time, for one of the few times in my life I didn't have a band, I just had myself and the guitar, so I was going to have to do something with just my voice, just the guitar and just my songs that was going to move someone enough to give me a shot. So I wrote songs that were very lyrically alive and lyrically dense. And they were unique, but it really came out of the motivation to - or I understood it was - I was going to have to make my mark that way.