I've got childhood friends who are working for non-profit foundations, or who are running for state senate and doing things that actually do fight evil in this world. And what am I doing? I bang on some drums in a rock band. I try to tell myself that by doing that, I'm fighting evil - which is completely absurd. Music is not equipped in any way to fight against anything. Other than, I guess, it could fight against silence.

That's one of the things that always grabbed me about rock music: There's a song, and you know how it goes, and you can sort of predict it, but a lot is left up to chance and interaction.

There were no rules. There's no guide to follow. I would just trust my instincts for some unknown reason. Something inside me would say, "This guitar is not loud enough," and I wouldn't know why. You never know how to reach that point until you've reached it.

When it's time to write a new song, anything that you thought you understood last time is pretty much pulverized.

Usually if someone starts making universal claims, I tune right on out.

When it comes down to intuition, when it comes down to gut feelings about whether a song is right, you can get distracted with words, rationalization. There's nothing wrong with music school, but part of music school has to be the ability to forget all of it, too.

It's weird to me to even say, "I wrote this song." I never feel like I wrote it; I feel like I heard it.