For the sound we produce, everybody is equally important. Each of us has a very different personality and that is what keeps Bush alive.

I don't know any musician who got to the top without hard work. Take whoever you want. They all work bloody hard, harder than you think.

I don't see myself as the boss. I sing and write the songs, and it would feel strange if somebody else wrote the lyrics I sang.

I've always thought that you just make everything as best as you can, and then, one day, people will look objectively at what you do, from a distance, and see its quality. All you try to do is keep the standard up so that, one day, when I sit back and I look at it all, I can feel really good about it.

It's like a relay race of being ignored. It is really challenging, but whenever I get asked that stuff, I feel really self-conscious about it. I feel really lucky because we have a lot of help. When I first began to be a dad with Gwen [Stefani], I was amazed at what she went through.

It's pretty hard to make out what's going to be a commercial success and what's not.

Every time I try to disown that concept for myself, which is a really healthy perspective, they bring it back all the time. It's so serious and so real and so tangible that you don't want to taint it with anything other than the thing itself. I was tickled pink with my very zen self, walking around saying that I made a record because I wanted to make a record. That's so beautiful. It's like a haiku poem. That takes away all the tension and the expectation. I just want to try to do something interesting.