If I went on 'American Idol,' I would definitely be kicked out immediately.

The way that you present yourself visually totally dictates your audience and everything that anyone thinks about you.

You rarely find someone who sings really well and who produces really well; it's a problem, and I just think it's a missing link in the music scene.

I approach music - and this sounds crazy - as though I'm Phil Spector, and I'm cranking out these pop stars and forcing them to do all this stuff - except they're all me. But I'm not, like, transgendered.

As a producer, I'm trying to challenge myself to just make something that is of a professional quality - not necessarily pop music, but maybe in the sense that Nine Inch Nails is professional quality.

Even though I really admire what Beyonce does, and she's probably got one of the best live shows in the world - honestly! - that's so not my style.

I think one of the reasons I'm successful as a musician is that the first like 30 shows I played, I played with no monitors standing in front of guitar amps in a shitty, smoky warehouse where people were screaming and wasted, knocking over my gear. So shows after that seem pretty easy!