The great thing is that when you hire string players you always get really great players. I don't know why that is.

I was staying at my friend's house and he told me about the drug Prednisone. It took me 14 years to discover it. And there are a lot of times that would have helped me out over the years. I can't believe I'd never even heard of it, though.

You feel like half of your life is a vacation when you go to these Barcelona music festivals and have all day to sound check or go to the pool.

The funny thing is that the studio that we recorded in was the same studio that Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby and Nat King Cole used to warm up their voices in before they went across the street to CBS Radio. The owner has preserved it exactly the way it was in 1925. It was such a perfect coincidence that we were doing music inspired by that stuff in that room. It was incredible.

Traveling makes a vacation lose all appeal. You would never want to take the family to a European city. You travel a lot, but it's a job.

I write songs now I look at my strengths and I start there. In The Walkmen, we'd start with the live stuff.

I was writing music when we finished the last Walkmen record, Heaven, and a few of these songs may have even been started before Heaven was done. With The Walkmen we all wrote a lot of stuff alone, but then we'd start collaborating with each other.