When you wrote a song way back in the day, you were writing material to play live. And you would buy the CD at the shows if you like the show. You may not listen to the CD, you might just throw it in the back of your car and let it warp in the sun. The main thing was you saw the song at the show.

There are bands, like R.E.M., who want to have 17 records, and some are terrible and some are great. I don't know if people think like that anymore. Things are more atomized now.

Advice is not really very useful. People gave me terrible advice, and I guess I was just smart enough to ignore some of it.

I'm a grown-ass man. I can't be, like, ordering people to put down their phones.

There's a lot of griping and groaning about wanting to play half-baked new songs live, but you don't want it to just end up on YouTube with like 74 thumbs down: "This is the worst!"

Now, by and large, people are recording material to put on YouTube. I have a theory that YouTube is, in the end, the #1 media for musicians. Which is strange, because there's a visual associated with it.

I like being a musician that's also a fly on the wall. I like people coming in the room and doing what they do and then leaving. I like attention, but it actually gives me a little less to work with as a performer if people are editing themselves and not being them.