My first guitar, a Fender Jazz Master, I traded it in for a Les Paul Deluxe.

You can't even sing or play an instrument, so you just scream instead. You're living for an image, so you got five hundred women in your bed.

I enjoy what people at the concert give me and I can't do it without them, so it's really an exchange of energy that snowballs back and forth and becomes something that's very satisfying and very magical.

The idea of having to conform to someone else's ideal is unacceptable. I'm gonna be me. And if I can't be me, then I'd rather not do it.

I don't think about the styles. I write whatever comes out and I use whatever kind of instrumentation works for those songs.

If you go to Japan, they're still buying vinyl, and they want the education. They know who's playing on what tracks from the '60s and the '70s - who the guitar player is, who the drummer is, who the producer was, what studio it was recorded in. That's how I grew up listening to music. We bought albums. We read the liner notes. It was important to know the whole history behind it.

When I'm in the studio, I write the music, I play the different instruments, I produce it, I arrange it, and it's a self-indulgent exercise. It's the way I make my music. And when I'm acting, I get to leave myself behind, which is a relief. I get to collaborate with a director; I respect the director's medium and all the actors and actresses. So at the end of the day, it's about a character and it's about a director's vision. It's a really good balance for being so intense and alone in my personal process of making music.