A lot of people at my school could play the "Stairway to Heaven" guitar solo, but they couldn't play three chords of a Ramones song if their life depended on it because they didn't have the strength or ability to do it. But all I did was practice that, and the style that I eventually fell into is more focused than people would actually imagine.

We've had incredibly huge obstacles in our way - no tapes, no royalties, no cooperation on any level - and we sort it out.

I don't feel bound by the ebbs and flows of musical trends, or what's happening with new music in general.

You wind up listening to one song that you really like 30 times on YouTube and then you're done with it. That's the way it is.

I do need to loosen up a bit, and that usually does come with old age. That's the intention.

I don't feel bound by the ebbs and flows of musical trends, or what's happening with new music in general. I always had a fascination with that sound. It's a mixture of the idea that something could be going wrong along with the idea of bending constrained, Westernized music out of tune. But because I wasn't copying an idea, and it just came from somewhere inside me, it felt like a birth of something that most people didn't understand at the time.

Digital might capture the dynamics of what I heard before it went to tape a bit more accurately, but on the other hand, when we'd switch from listening to the digital version to the analog, the change was so profound - the music would suddenly go three-dimensional, and it felt much more engaging.