The Silvertop and the Goldtop both had subtlety where it was needed but lots of definition as well. I liked the different voicings of the distortion/fuzz elements.

If you only ever heard "Valley Girl," or "Don't Eat The Yellow Snow," or a song that has a comedic narrative, you would get some impression that that was novelty music, but that's the only stuff that ever got on the radio. You can make the argument that that's what has confused generations as to what his music's about.

Modern records are all made with virtually identical gear, software plug-ins and everything. Everybody wants everything to sound like the last thing that was popular because they're chasing their tails.

There's no difference in a lot of people's minds between good musicians and popular musicians.

And, you know, my dad would show me some things sometimes, but the best things that I got to do were to actually see really good players play up close. That gives you an idea of fingering and technique and what not.

I know my name gets used illegally all the time all over the internet. You know, it is a trademarked name, so it will be something that we always have to deal with. I never needed to change it. It was always fine with me. It is a strange name; that's for sure.

But the reality is when you write a song, you should be able to strip away all the instruments and just have a song right there with an acoustic guitar and a voice, and the song should be good.