And I don't expect anyone can bring about a revolution in the way that Bob Dylan did - and really didn't - in the 1960s.

Links have become the suburbs of the real world.

I was doing that [a collaboration with Kurt Cobain] to try to save his life. The collaboration was me calling up as an excuse to reach out to this guy. He was in a really bad place.

I don't find R.E.M. to be nihilistic. There is a constant undertone of joyous optimism. I'm not going to kill myself to Patti Smith or R.E.M.

I was vegetarian, trying to eat from fast-food restaurants without meat. I didn't know how to eat properly and I was starving. I was adrenalized to the eyeballs from performing. I was afraid that I was sick with AIDS. We were playing five shows a week. I even went through a period of abstinence where I didn't drink and stopped having sex. Which is crazy. Maybe I'm answering too many questions at once here, but this is where my mind was at the age of 25.

I'm not homosexual, I'm not hetrosexual, I'm just sexual.

You don't need to be talented. You don't even have to play the guitar to be a guitar player in a punk-rock band. So I, in a very naïve and teenage way, said, "That's it. I'm going to be in a band."