Who you are as a performer is one thing, but when you're making records, you're dealing with musicians' tastes, their goals, their wants, their needs, everyone's individual pride.

The thing is, unfortunately, I write the best songs when I'm miserable.

Writing the songs and producing the songs and arranging them and recording them is your canvas and your palette and your brush.

I'm not sober. I haven't done drugs in 3 1/2 years, so I call myself clean.

I see love, like art, as an obsession. Maybe that's an overly romantic view of human existence, but I'm an overly romantic human being. If love, like rock and roll, doesn't consume me 24-7, it's not love. It can be respect, appreciation, admiration, wonderment, it can be a world of glory and a lifetime of peace, but I can't call it love. Love burns me and confuses me. Love's a light that can't be extinguished.

There's a beauty in being part of a band, when there's equality and trust.

I tend to get my hands into all these other things and all these distractions, and after a while I start feeling depleted.