Drugs are fine for you alone at home, but when it comes to being a family, which a band is, it just messes everything up.

It's pretty easy to lose money on tour - most bands do on their first couple of tours. We're more established, but I think it was just poorly booked. It was a mess from the get-go.

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

There's all these people involved, and it becomes this huge machine - it stops being just me making my own little songs for myself, or for the world. And it's hard to stop the machine. If you want to take time to write a record, they're like, "OK, tour through March, April, and June, then you can take a few weeks off to record in July before getting back on the road for the European festival circuit." After a while, I had to put my foot down.

If I play Coachella, it's sponsored by a company - that's corporate, too. But we're playing it because we're getting paid and we want to be a part of the festival.

Somebody who knows all about how to make the record, or how to make records, they know how to work the EQ and they know how to work the stuff, but they don't know what I want it to sound like. So it's just easier for me to do it myself.

Music is an opportunity to say every single thing that you want to say. People will pore over whatever you say and however you say it and, for me, it represents complete freedom of speech.