That really sums up the strange bluntness that a really prime German interview can have. They're really interested in your cultural velocity in this way that I don't think people in the United States even necessarily think about alternative-rock bands. So it's not like we're against regular rock. We're not like a battling army shaking our weapons against The Rolling Stones.

A lot of times I'll post things on Facebook, and the immediate response will be like, "Stick to the music!"

I read The Onion, and I've read a lot of interviews that are very direct, often with people who are never direct. Which is interesting. But somehow the A.V.Club part of The Onion, I don't think is telegraphed into the popular culture.

Bill O'Reilly knew he could just filibuster and enjoy all the airtime that a full interview would give him, and then also grab the sensationalist headlines that he enjoys creating. He used this as fodder for his show for weeks. I wouldn't want to be on the bad side of Bill O'Reilly. But then again, maybe I am now. By giving this interview.

Every declarative statement that comes out of an interview with somebody is actually in response to a question. It's like this very real interpersonal dance where one of the people involved is invisible.

This happened years and years ago, right as our videos were first being played on MTV. The interviewer said, "You guys are getting famous now. Are you going to be riding around in limousines, doing drugs, and sleeping with beautiful women?" And I was a precocious young man, and my snappy comeback to that cheerful question was, "We're willing to sleep with beautiful women." But no part of the question was in the article.

Sometimes people will ask a real "Why are you beating your wife?" question where there's some assumption built into it, and all you're trying to do is kind of re-contextualize it with some element of truth, and it comes across as incredibly defensive, or just really weird.