What most people find festive-a weekend at a beach shack with friends, a boat trip down a river, a crackling bonfire on a summer night-I see as a bleak nightmare to be grimly endured. I would sooner put lit cigarettes in my eyes than share a vacation house with a crowd.

If you were to share your workout playlist with the world, I guarantee there's stuff on there that wouldn't pass the cool test, and M2 helped in that way.

And when I say [M2 was] lo-fi production, it was so great and grimy. I was used to that world anyway, because we shot in bars, we shot in thrift shops, we shot on the street. And the bars, they would have just opened, and still there was barf on the floor and beer. We certainly kept it real. It was a small crew.

Also because few people were watching - aside from a healthy amount of incarcerated people, because M2 was offered in a lot of prisons - I was able to ask really long, kind of muso questions, that they loved. We could really geek out and talk about music for long periods of time, and that tape would just keep rolling and rolling.

I don't look like a model; I'm a rock writer.

I wondered how I was going to do it and keep my job at Rolling Stone at the same time. They were very nice, and they let me disappear for two days a week for a couple of hours. That's how long shooting was.

if your subject is an actor, he or she will also be shorter in person than they appear onscreen. This, also, you must keep to yourself. Even if you think you are giving their lack of height a positive spin, you aren't. 'You always seem larger than life in photos, but it's nice to see that in person you're just like us' might seem like a compliment, but what a star hears is 'You're stumpy, and you will lose jobs to taller people.