My parents mistook me for a sack of potatoes so I sat in the corner of the kitchen for the first 13 years of my life. My birth name is Thom Potatoes.

I'm even taller in person, because photographs shrink you down and steal your soul native american.

My songs are my kids. Some of them stay with me, some others I have to send out, out to the war. It might sound stupid and it might even sound naive, but that's just the way it is.

I'd go onstage doing this thing, trying to fill this arena that I can't fill because I don't understand what this is. It's like you're given a job that's beyond you. And it's taken me years to realize what works in those big situations.

I think no artist can claim to have any access to the truth, or an authentic version of an event. But obviously they have slightly better means at their disposal because they have their art to energize whatever it is they're trying to write about. They have music.

Coming from Britain, I was terrified of meeting all these other artists, because artists over there tend to fight with each other a lot, the premise being that there's not enough room for everybody.

Imagine? Yeah I can imagine John Lennon being dead.