They always want me to play myself and that's a big snooze.

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.

When I get really hammered I take my clothes off. That's a sure sign. It's been a long time since the last time I did that. Probably a year.

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.

I was vulnerable every day. Every night that I stepped on stage I was laying myself open.

There tend to be two different drives that lead young people toward music. One is that music provides an escape; it takes you away from the unhappiness or torture of where you are and makes you feel less alienated-you believe there is a place you fit in somewhere else. The other is a sort of transcendent, spiritual feeling in the purity of music.

The whole punk ethic was do-it-yourself, and I've always been very literal, especially as a kid. When they said that anybody can do this, I was like, 'OK, that's me.'