The most successful stuff is sold to you as indispensable social information. The message in the music is, 'We are terribly, terribly slick and suave, and if you listen to us, you can probably get a leg up in society, too.'

There are no pimps, no whores, no transvestites - gone. Now that's more the culture I'm comfortable in ... I don't like it in the house, you know what I mean, but I like it somewhere around.

Well, after Zombie Birdhouse came out, I toured behind it in the fall of 1982, into the spring, and in the summer in the Far East. At that time, I found my work self-referential; it was getting to be rock songs about a rock singer who lived a rock life on the rock road, and I was starting to wonder what I would be like to rent my own apartment, what it would be like to have a checkbook.

What do you do with a lifetime of work? Face it in the morning.

Nihilism is best done by professionals.

If you give a good performance, something that gets some feeling across to people, that’s such a rare gift. It’s underestimated at this point in history, when the music biz is inevitably turning into a kind of politics.

The people who were learning from me tended to be more commercial performers who were gonna rip off the salient idea to do it in a way that will sell, but they weren't going for the music.