I try and direct environmentally . So that people don't feel like everything is going to depend on what happens when someone says, 'Action'. So that they can literally be swimming in the warm water and at some point the race begins, and at some point the race ends, but it is about being free to swim.

I remember that, before John Lennon died, everyone was saying that Rolling Stone couldn't do good reporting anymore. But when he died, they wrote this amazing issue, as they should have about Lennon. They did that when Elvis died, too.

Be positive, be positive. It's rough out there, but don't succumb. Don't succumb to the cynicism in the world.

The current state of music journalism is not bad, but it's not great at all. Some of the hip-hop stuff people get into is exciting, because there's a passion and there's something to explain to a more mainstream audience, so you get these passionate writers who want to express their love for rap and hip-hop, which is cool. But there are too many magazines, and the access has been diminished, so the quality of profiles has gone way down. Internet stuff can be really good, though. I like the dialogue between fans on the Internet. I think that's the best rock writing that's going on right now.

Great music is its own movie, already. And the challenge, as a music fan, is to keep the song as powerful as it wants to be, to not tamper with it and to somehow give it a home.

I always loved movies, but I never thought I would presume to be a screenwriter and definitely not a director. I spent a lot of time for no money trying to teach myself how to write a script. It always felt like everybody was looking the other way and sneaking that script through the system, but it did well later on video and got another chance.

RRC remains the best publication to hit my mailbox