The saddest thing is that when I sat down to rehearse for the Pixies, I couldn't believe that I had given up something that I loved. Now I hold the drum at night and I want to go to bed with it.
Most superheroes are painted with a specific moral objective that makes them who they are. And that moral objective influences everything they do, so there's an expectation for what you're going to see out of a certain character.
I've found throughout the years that I needed a place where I can go with no TV, no computer, no phone and just have no distractions and just be able to sit and think and just not be disturbed.
We all have those days when you feel like you're against the world, every little thing goes wrong and your blood pressure is up. And you feel like punching somebody!
I grew up going to a real small missionary baptist church. We would sing a lot of the old standards... the hymns and everything. Those songs are still my favorite and are pretty timeless.
Ever since I'm done with Zim everyone thinks that I'm going to go back to comics. I've been flooded with emails asking me if I'm working on the new Johnny over and over again.
'Johnny' was a coping mechanism who could take those things which could have ordinarily destroyed me, by tweaking my past and throwing it back out there, getting laughs from things that would have otherwise upset me.
In a song, you have to have a lyric that gives us new ideas on how to live, a lyric that makes us feel, and a melody that gives you some kind of body response and emotional response.
From beginning to end it's about keeping the energy and the intensity of the story and not doing too much and not doing too little, but just enough so people stay interested and stay involved in the characters.
I have two favorite songs. My first is called 'Dance of The Robe' and it's a very powerful number where she is feeling the pressure from her people to take on the responsibility of leading them.
I've always been switching around the show to accommodate the audience, and you know it really makes it a lot more fun for me and keeps it fresh so that I'm not complacent with the same show every night and with every audience.
My uncle gave me a trumpet, but I loved the Louis Armstrong sound and the Harry James sound and I played by ear and I played always soulful or very direct from the gut.
When I was 18 at the Santa Ana River Jetty is where I put my first board in the water that I ever got from Joe Quigg. I was just riding the whitewater in, and I was just in heaven.
When I started surfing, you'd hear this neat rumbling sound when you took off and go for the drop, and when the wave is lipping up over the top of you, it makes this hissing sound.
I never considered myself a songwriter, but now since I've been working with Nick Lowe, I am contributing to an extent. But I'm the guitarist and he's not, so we compliment each other in a way.
If you only do little clusters - three or four songs by one, and another, and then yet another - you lose the opportunity to think your way into the composer's mind, since, after all, most of these pieces are quite brief.
For years and years, I was beset with snide remarks by certain members of the press, where they would turn John Oates into a joke, or they would trivialize what I do, which never really bothered me all that much.
I've always thought of myself as being extremely lucky. The idea is to keep that luck going. Headlining the Stanley was a real kick. I think it's the type of thing I could get used to.
There will be a competition for the memorial. And then it can be developed with trees, with planting. It can become a very beautiful place protected from the streets, because it is below. And it can be something very moving and very private.
It's about how to bring together the seemingly contradictory aspects of the memorial, which is about a tragedy and how it changed the world, but also about creating a vital and beautiful city of the 21st century.
I go to clubs and if I notice the DJs are playing the records faster, then I'll push the beats a little on the next record I make. A lot of people don't know how to watch out for things like that.
