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.

A lot of young musicians get the money at the wrong time. They get it for something they don’t feel great about, and it’ll make you feel so bad it’ll destroy you and kill you.

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.

I don't get my bliss by listening over and over to people in the street thinking, "Boy, is it that good?" Even though every time I hear it that's what I think. But I get it in human situations. There is this little voice that is going, "The reason you're able to enjoy your life now is that you made it in rock'n'roll and people are giving you free visas all over the place. Dude, you are being spoiled".

Basically, I’m a musical vocalist, but I do voiceover stuff as a sideline, like plumbing or something.

In the morning I'd write these essays, anything that I'd feel like writing, and in the afternoon, I'd spend time with my guitar. I had decided after listening to my last four or five albums that my biggest weakness musically was melody. the reason I had been singing in a monotone over the chord patterns in my songs was that I never practiced doing melodies.

I kinda feel like everything comes full circle in life, even though that's a cliche.