Before I had a driver's license, and I lived in the suburbs of Minneapolis and went to high school and came home - I could ride my bike around or get a ride from my parents, but my world was pretty small, limited. Like anyone at that age, I only knew things I could get to.

I think you want to write a song that's like the songs you are into.

Ironically, when I was playing in my first band, I would deliberately not write down any lyrics. I have a really good memory and I would just keep them in my head.

It's a template record for the intersection between pop and noise, starting out with 'Sunday Morning' - a real beautiful, almost innocent sunny day song. You have a lot of different types of things on one record. It can be really pretty, or it can be really awful inside, depending on where your head's at at the moment. I got it in ninth grade and I think I've listened to it every month since then.

There's this moment sometimes, when you do a crossword puzzle and you have the one really long word. And once you get that, the whole thing kind of comes into focus. Sometimes it's just working things over in your mind and then finding that one line that kind of ties the song together, and now it works. It's a puzzle of sorts.

The Replacements are the foundation for a lot of what came after in alternative and college rock. Let It Be is their best record and has the most diverse collection of songs. Some pop stuff, some heavy stuff, and some real moments of beauty like 'Sixteen Blue' and 'Androgynous.' It's a record I always go back to.

The more you release records, in some ways it takes pressure off you.