I could not finish the rest of the tours the band had planned. I was replaced by Matt Cameron. The next years of my life were about recovery, healing, and right living. I never lost the need to create.
When I left HEEP I didn't know what I wanted! It took me a long time to adjust to life away from the band and the only thing I knew was that I didn't want to repeat my mistakes!
I've made music for grownups most of my life as a singer/songwriter - often with my band, Nine Stories - recorded many albums, and 10 years ago I started recording kid's music, too.
I've built my whole life around loving music. I'm a writer for 'Rolling Stone,' so I am constantly searching for new bands and soaking up new sounds.
I shopped for body shapers for the first time in my life and I was horrified. They were thick - it was like wearing workout clothes and they all had a leg band on one side that showed through the pants.
I love what I do, somehow I have been able to play in a band for my entire life and that is all I ever wanted to do. I love that I get to do that.
A friend and I started a band together. I am kind of learning how to play instruments. We write stuff over Skype or e-mail. I send one part and he writes another.
If you were looking at where you would like your career to go, then you would have to cherry pick The Stones. People love coming to see them. They are it, they are the most definitive rock n roll band ever.
The game Rock Band has been haunting me like a bad ring tone. It gets stuck in my head and momentarily effaces all that I love about music.
A band like Depeche Mode would go out and record them hitting a trash can with a steel rod or something and recording it. And that would be one of their sounds of the drums. I love the creativeness of that kind of really raw sampling.
We are different people - you get a different take on the band whoever you speak to. Somehow, at the end of it, it goes through the filtering process and out comes the Radiohead thing.
When I go to shows, I'm really looking forward to hearing the songs I know. I don't like it when a band tries to expose me to new stuff.
My whole back's tattooed. I just wanted a twist. I was always in punk bands when I was little... I think that's where the tie comes from.
To me, Sabbath was always JUSt a really heavy blues band. That s all we were. We just took those blues roots and made them heavier.
I think now, more than anytime I can remember, bands are sounding pretty similar whether they're English or American, from Manchester or London... or Leeds or Welsh or Irish.
So many of the bands that influenced me growing up were English, even if I didn't realise it. English pop ruled the world in the '80s!
With Dollars And Cents on the album, we had it as a band jam and I sometimes spend evenings playing with records over the top of things we were working on to see what works.
I mean, I'm in a band, we're reasonably successful, I've got a very nice suit - I'm not even a bad person- so why can't I get a shag?
After this many years of being a lead singer in a touring rock band, I've had my fair share of fun. But those days are long behind me.
I am very much into voices. I would say I'm a fan of voices, not of sound. I'm a fan of singers, not of bands.
I always sang. I wanted to be in a band with my sister, and I was, at 11. At 12, I started writing seriously, and that was my pacifier all through high school - that and painting.
