If you've got a guitar and a lot of soul, just bang something out and mean it. You're the superstar.

But my role is to just apply the skills I've learned over the years: you listen to the guitar, you listen to the vocal melodies, you listen to the rhythm, and you come up with something that helps you take the song somewhere.

Mike Watt and I had the same teacher. Mr. Tanaka.

But whenever history is in the making, there's some kind of intangible feeling.

When Nirvana hit it big, it was overwhelming because we were part of the counterculture. Nirvana didn't go to the mainstream - the mainstream came to Nirvana.

The perception of him as brooding and dark and miserable, that is baloney. Kurt Cobain was a funny dude.

And Seattle isn't really crazy anymore. It's a big dot-com city.