In my low periods, I wondered what was the point of creating art. For whom? Are we animating God? Are we talking to ourselves? And what was the ultimate goal? To have one's work caged in art's great zoos - the Modern, the Met, the Louvre?

I can't bear working with a click track, we're not click track people. But for "Mercy Is ..." we all got in one mind because the song is delicate; it's not a song that showcases a vocal or some virtuoso.

My father hated rock and roll - hated it. My first real argument with my father was over the Rolling Stones. And he never, ever liked rock and roll. He just liked me.

I'd never had people drive me around, and then all of a sudden, if a car didn't come, I'd say, "Where's my car?"

I was so unhealthy as a child, and at least three or four times my parents were told to get ready, that I would not make it.

I've always considered myself a writer.

When I started making music, we'd lost a lot of our great people. Rock was moving in a direction I didn't like. Rock was my generation's revolutionary, sexual, poetic, and political voice, but it had become corporatized. It was going into stadiums. It was so far removed from its basic roots.