I don't care what people do. I don't care how people remember my albums. I do them for my own reasons.
The first album, for better or for worse, was done over from the ages of 17-22, with a couple of different producers. Some of it was recorded in an old swimming pool, some of it was recorded in a synagogue - it kind of was all over the place.
That's why I named my album 'Finding Forever,' because that's what I was thinking about: What did I want to contribute to this world that would live beyond my physical existence?
My sister discovered the Beatles when she was about 11 and I'm four years younger. So we had nothing but Beatles paraphernalia. Every night I fell asleep to a different Beatles album.
My audience are the same people who bought my albums years ago. These people are now married, with their own homes, their own families. If I'm in concert, I get people now who bring their kids.
I have always identified with Joan Didion's depiction of Los Angeles and Southern California, ever since reading 'Play It As It Lays,' 'Slouching Towards Bethlehem' and 'The White Album.'
Barbra Streisand, for one, is one of my idols. I've listened to her since I was a little kid - the first album I ever bought was 'A Star is Born' with Kris Kristofferson.
On record dates like that I never felt too nervous because everything was really overdubbed. When we did that album, we were in the studio for probably a week, so you had a lot of opportunity to fix things.
The main issue was deciding what to play: Should it be old Ramones material or new material? I had about three albums worth of new material, but I knew that people would rather hear the Ramones songs.
All I can say is that I've had too many people in the hip-hop industry really like what I'm doing. I know where I'm coming from, and the album speaks for itself.
I'm a singer, not a politician, and I think you don't want the two to get confused. It's not OK to be on CNN talking about people starving and then tell the interviewer that your new album is coming out in six months.
Seeing Jennifer Holliday from 'Dreamgirls' perform on the Tony Awards telecast and later discovering Barbra Streisand by listening to her albums at the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh really changed everything for me.
The iPod has changed all that because sometimes I listen to an album from beginning to end, but now I put the stuff on shuffle and have the iPod tell me what I'm listening to, especially if I'm working out.
Do you realize that I have had five albums in the Top 30. Elvis and The Beatles have never done that. I had five singles in the Top 5, I mean, no one's ever done that.
It'll be basically a live album, but it will also include songs, Judas Priest songs, the audience have never heard before, because we felt we wanted to give the kids something else, something they haven't already bought.
After playing so many songs in churches for eight or nine years, I've learned what songs people react to. Then I just had fun with the arrangements. That's how this album came together.
I don't want the big flashing lights and red carpet, like, 'Here comes another Bon Iver album!' I just want it to be my bedroom-y thing. But that'll take a while to figure out.
Recently, I've been working on anew album of material, which should be out in the new Millennium. I'm not sure which song will be put out as a single, but I'm still hoping to get another record in the charts.
A lot of the records you buy, there's nothing you can hold in your hand, it's all 1's and 0's, this digital cloud floating in the ether. but with analog albums, you can hold it in your hand.
We've had a number 1 album in the UK and that was a really big thing for me. So now all we've got to do is do it in America and that will have the domino effect of doing it across the rest of the world.
In the past, I've been a bit diffident about my own albums, almost excusing them for some reason, even though deep down I felt strongly about them.
