I think that certainly, whenever you have a new band, the first record always has a certain energy to it before you know what you're doing. I think some of the early Sonic Youth stuff was maybe like that.
When you tour with a band, you're just out there, and it's just you guys. That's your little universe. If you do a play, it's the same deal. That becomes your world, for the cast and crew.
Another thing that was unique about working on this stuff was that I was engineering it. I used many of the things I had learned while I was away from the band. It sort of vindicated my decision to leave in '87.
I had to seal off my feelings about Stevie while seeing her every day and having to help her, too. But you get on with it. What was happening to the band was much bigger than any of that.
It's a gamble. A band like Kiss, a lot of those are our audience but we don't do as much make-up. Alice would have more to lose if we got back together.
If Nirvana had remained a small, underground punk rock band, Kurt Cobain would still be alive. And he'd probably be living in Seattle, getting kind of fat and balding, be relatively happy and producing records for other people.
I've had some really wonderful opportunities in my career, 'Band of Brothers' being one of them. That's material that can really make a difference, but I don't think of that going into it - at least not consciously.
I was the lead singer in a lot of the bands I was in. You have to be comfortable. You gotta get up there and sell the song. You have to get up there and sell the lyric. You gotta be able to feel it.
For a period in the '90s, I felt that the Cure was massively undervalued. But there has been a paradigm shift. There's a bunch of newer bands coming up who've grown up listening to the Cure and don't understand that you're not supposed to like us.
Even the two times that I left, I never really felt like I left the band. It's very bizarre. It's like there's sort of an umbilical cord that stretches between us spiritually.
The bands that have been the most important to me, and the records that have been the most important to me as a fan, have been records that surprised me for one reason or another.
I began with dance, doing ballet at 3, then tap, jazz, modern. Then I sang in church choirs, learned how to play clarinet and drums, sang with rock bands and only then did I get into musical theatre.
Occasionally when I'm procrastinating writing, I'll while away the hours on iTunes. You can just keep going forever and find these bands you'd never normally hear of.
I used to tour with this band. I was a drummer. I would tour a bunch for about 10 months out of the year and act for about two months. I would make what I needed from acting and would stretch it out.
But we're very much an American band and that's that. I think that's part of the appeal outside of this country and it might be part of the reason people turned away from us within this country, because familiarity breeds contempt.
The live setting is always better for me. I usually thrive at live. I feel like having a band behind me and being able to interact with the crowd helps boost my energy up.
There was a euphoria in the music and the way it was delivered, and as the crowds started to get bigger, it fed off itself until it became less about the band and more about being with all those people jumping up and down, drunk to the music.
I meet many people, I talk with them, like a TV show host. I show what's going on with Greenpeace, interesing political things, I have artists, musicians and bands.
I have two pairs of stretchy maternity leggings and jeans, which I will never give up, because once you experience an elastic band for a waist, you will never go back.
So there was something of a learning curve with doing your own thing and people seeing you outside of the band. I mean, people have never really heard my voice before - or heard a whole record of mine before. So it was a completely new experience.
Obviously everybody knows that I'm an original songwriter and I got my band. And the guys in 'Sugar Money,' no matter what, are part of my family and they always got something to do with me, and I don't care if they just hang out with me.
