Some cities are really boring and straight.

I met my manager when I was 17, when I didn't have enough money to buy a set of guitar strings. There are not very many people who are looking out for you and being in business with you when you're at that stage. And it's not in my nature to think that success as a musician makes you any different from anybody else.

That enforced time when you have to switch off, that you're on a plane, is so unusual these days. It's just that thing of not being able to interact with other people through e-mails or social media or whatever. It's crazy how you even notice that you're not able to do that. I find that the kind of traveling - long days, particularly if you go somewhere to do a show, and then traveling again the next day - a lot of people would find pretty challenging, but I find it energizing in a weird way.

Growing up in public is a test, and not many people know how to do it.

The actual process of travel I really like, because that time on planes and in airports makes me feel like I'm moving around like a ghost. There's a certain aspect of justifiable downtime. I really feel like being online is so pervasive now.

I had a feeling about what I wanted to say, and I wasn't really qualified to discuss real things out of America because I didn't grow up there.

In the earlier part of the 90s, I was really hell-bent on discovering how new technology works and how to make records entirely without a producer, which isn't necessarily what fans wanted. But I had to do it because I felt it was in my destiny or whatever.