I'll leave it to other people to evaluate the legacy of my book, but I'm very moved when musicians tell me that they've been inspired by my book.

As a journalist, I'm not supposed to be the subject, but as an author, I'm fair game - another ingredient in the media soup.

I'm not sure I ever try to make a case for the music. I mean, sometimes the music isn't even that good. I just tell the band's stories; if I describe the music, it's to explain how it moved the overall story along.

You didn't have to be a huge rock star; you just had to do well enough to continue doing what you wanted to do. It wasn't about hitting the jackpot, it was about sustainability.

The online musical universe has become Balkanized, with many sites focusing on minute niches. That works well for reaching very specific demographics, which is wonderful for advertising, but it flies in the face of the common wisdom that people's tastes have become more diverse as music of any description has become a mouse-click away.

Ten percent of the American population thinks that Barack Obama is a Muslim. Those are the people that have not learned the skill of filtering information from the vast barrage of inaccurate information that we're all faced with everyday. I think that's a very 21st century skill.

Critics and fans use the music of their youth as reference points. For years, people seriously wondered who "the next Beatles" were going to be, and classic rock bands were the de facto yardstick for rock quality.