But there's got to be an opening somewhere here in front of me. Through this maze of ugliness and greed.

Artists are not going to put somebody new in the president's chair. It's all worth the effort; it all needs to be done. But I don't look at songwriting as having the ability to necessarily do that today.

Its a little gross to put yourself in every song. I mean, how interesting do people really think you are?

There are certainly a lot of people - and I won't name names - who are getting by simply on expression. And I guess that's valuable in some sense. But songs are not better just because they're emotionally honest. To write a song well, you have to put some work into it and grind it out.

Those things interest me a lot in songwriting - the human nature of how people think, and the muck that we wind up in.

Tolerance can lead to learning something.

I relate more to the descendants of Galileo Galilei and the Wright brothers than I do to anyone else you might mention. If you could name someone working today who I could relate to, I'd be both surprised and thrilled.