What I wanted was just to make music, and so, originally I just wanted to hide behind the album cover of the last record, and I wanted it to be almost anonymous.

It's this funny thing now: You sign up to be a musician because you want to write music, but you don't spend your time writing music. Instead, you go around the world selling the music you've already made.

We were a commodity used by corporations to make their brand look fashionable, but then they used us to keep kids out of venues.

I had these glorified ideas about San Francisco and its drug culture - I thought inspiration would just hit me and I would get these San Francisco drugs in my system and all of a sudden an amazing record would come out. But that's not really what happened at all.

I spent my life working before I started band. I worked construction, landscaping. I worked in kitchens, cleaned dishes. I worked demolition.

I grew up around fashion - my mom was an editor for Vogue. Compared to the music industry, though, I'd say [fashion] is a little bit more disorganized. But it's exciting for me because, when you're a performer, there is a fashion element.

To be told that you're the voice of your generation is such an incredible amount of pressure, and I haven't faced that. Maybe by the time our third record rolls around, I will. My goals are to be a band like that in five years. At the moment, though, I can't really relate in any sense to the scale that Kurt Cobain fame has reached.