No one is you, and that is your power.

I think musicians like me are drawn to those older desks, not just because they're legend and lore but also because they do something really specific that is hard to emulate or re-create digitally.

I always loved writing songs - writing for myself and demo-ing songs, really with no intention of ever letting anyone else hear them. Finally the Foo Fighters stuff happened when I just went to the studio down the street from my house and recorded some stuff in about five or six days, and all these people wanted to release it as an album. I wanted to release it on my own, with no photos and no names on it.

The late '60s and the '70s, a lot of this really beautiful equipment was being made and installed into studios around the world and the Neve boards were considered like the Cadillacs of recording consoles. They're these really big, behemoth-looking recording desks; they kind of look like they're from the Enterprise in Star Trek or something like that. They're like a grayish color, sort of like an old Army tank with lots of knobs, and to any studio geek or gear enthusiast it's like the coolest toy in the world.

Actually, I didn't start sweating until I had children.

I love Black Sabbath. They made an amazing contribution to music today. Almost every band that made it big in the Nineties owed a debt to them.

There's something about pulling out a real tape from a shelf and looking at it and knowing that 'Everlong' is on it, or 'Best of You' is on it, and it's really special.