Performing is a thing in itself, a distinct skill, different from making recordings. And for those who can do it, it's a way to make a living.
I encourage people not to be passive consumers of music and of culture in general. And feeling like, yeah, you can enjoy the products of professionals, but that doesn't mean you don't have to completely give up the reins and give up every connection to music or whatever it happens to be.
The city is a body and a mind - a physical structure as well as a repository of ideas and information.
In retrospect, I can see I couldn't talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching about. Ha! Like, that sure made sense!
Doing the box set is one of those things where you get to rewrite your own history to some extent. We could take out some of the songs that we felt weren't as strong as some of the others, so you look better.
I've rarely seen video screens used well in a music concert.
I wanted to be a secret agent and an astronaut, preferably at the same time.
That's the thing about pictures: they seduce you.
Suburban houses and tin sheds are often the objects of ridicule.
The true face of smoking is disease, death and horror - not the glamour and sophistication the pushers in the tobacco industry try to portray.
Sometimes I write stuff that strangely predicts what's going to happen in my life.
I subscribe to the myth that an artist's creativity comes from torment. Once that's fixed, what do you draw on?
I try to devote my afternoons to making music in my home studio, but it's a lot more fun hanging out with musicians and friends, and trying subtly to influence a band than making your own stuff.
In a certain way, it's the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.
I meet young people who know me and are familiar with my stuff. They know the package. They might have cherry-picked five or six key tunes. That's how it seems to work. I sometimes wonder if they realise they are not getting the whole context.
Obviously, you go through a lot of emotional turmoil in a divorce.
I couldn't talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching.
I've been asking myself: 'Why put together these things - CDs, albums?' The answer I came up with is, well, sometimes it's artistically viable. It's not just a random collection of songs. Sometimes the songs have a common thread, even if it's not obvious or even conscious on the artists' part.
