Even if you don't like what I do, and you don't like my band, you might have a fan that likes both of us, and why would you wanna alienate them?
I never anticipated seeing 40.
I was homeless for almost a year and a half, just living in my car or bouncing around peoples' houses, going to 7-Eleven at the end of the day and asking them for the taquitos that they were going to throw out because I hadn't eaten in two days.
There was never a time when I wasn't making guitars out of cardboard or dressing up like the Misfits.
The older I got, I started to realize more it's not necessarily that any of us are inherently bad or good; you just kind of carve your own way, and you are your experiences and your surroundings and what you grow up in.
Lyrically, the most important thing for me is, how can I tell a cohesive story?
As far as being onstage, commanding presence, I've always looked up to people like Axl Rose and Freddie Mercury and Paul Stanley - the rock gods. I've always wanted to be able to achieve that level of commanding nature onstage and really leading people at a show.
I think, on any given day, somebody could help out a homeless person and cuss out somebody that cut them off in traffic, and I think that everybody has that inside them: it's just how you live that balance - so I think everybody is 'Wretched and Divine.'
There's no place for Depeche Mode and the Sisters of Mercy in the music I make with my band. If I was a fan, I wouldn't want to hear that on a Black Veil Brides record. It was important for me and for the integrity of the band not to tarnish it.
My whole life, I've loved '80s synth and goth rock like The Sisters of Mercy and Depeche Mode.
Nobody is convinced that Johnny Depp goes to Walmart dressed as Sweeney Todd, but everyone expects us to.
I don't really have any interest in allowing other people's kind of idiotic, unnecessary, either bigotry or hatred or whatever derision they have for me, I don't allow for it to really bother me, because I don't need it.
My job as the host of a rock awards show is not to be as divisive as possible, but certainly you want to be able to interject your jokes and how you feel about stuff.
I've always been a big fan of utopian, future, new-world stories - 'V For Vendetta,' comic books, graphic novels.
A band like Avenged Sevenfold I've praised quite a bit publicly, because it's a band that has moved into that arena-size thing for a hard rock band.
There is nothing more, I guess, cannibalistic than the metal or the hard rock scene, it seems.
I don't want to paint myself as some villain - I was never a bad guy doing horrible things, but I got too caught up in wanting a very specific thing to happen to the band. Ultimately, I had to find the ability in myself to get over that and stop being so stringent and learn to laugh a little bit more.
Growing up, I went to the Warped Tour a lot, and I got to see bands like Rancid and AFI and Dropkick Murphys and these bands that meant so much to me when I was a kid - all in succession on these stages, so to get to play that same stage that I watched those bands play is a huge thing for me.
On Warped Tour in Boise, Idaho, I broke my tooth on the mic. I took a pretty significant chunk out of my tooth and had to have it sanded down. It wasn't the most painful injury, but it was the most unexpected one.
We're not here to make the ignorant people happy. We're here to write our music for those people that are interested in good rock n' roll music.
