I think, as an artist, part of your job is being aware of what's going on around you and not selling out and not following the trend, which I'm totally against.
I base my track-listing and what songs I pick by what my fans expect from me and what they want and what I think they want.
I've never been the type of guy that's ever needed a lot of things or any fancy things, but my lifelong goal has always been to have a piece of land and a house.
I danced in a company of 'West Side Story' when I was very young. It was most of the original cast - Larry Kert, Chita Rivera - and Jerry Robbins directed. It was tough, a wonderful initiation for me.
You never know what's going to happen sometimes, or what you think's going to happen never happens, or when you least expect it, the Santana record comes along and just blows up.
I also did some jail time a few years ago. Spent a whole summer in jail reading books. I pumped a ton of new knowledge and new thinking into myself.
It's hard to write new stuff when the songs you have written before are still changing and evolving. It would be like building something when the foundations there are not really solid.
Pain is definitely a genius in his own right. 'Thr33 Ringz' is definitely one of my top 10 albums. It's one of those albums you listen to front-to-back.
With anything I do, it's hard to categorize it. With any project, I just go in and blindly start writing songs and then find out which way we want to go with it.
It gets harder and harder to make sure your public understands you're a sensitive human being, but I am sensitive. I don't like to be hurt.
Writing for me is quite a plastic form, a kind of mental sculpture, although that sounds weird. It acquires its character and its depth as it goes along.
No one will die because of bad acting. No one will die because you missed a cue. We're all human beings. If mistakes are made, you figure out that you're going to live.
Even with revivals, I don't really pay attention to previous incarnations. I always just go with the script and with the director and am willing to treat it as brand new.
It was really weird to have a hit. Of course, we had a certain level of fame in the Pixies, but nothing I had ever done had been mall-kid friendly.
Writers who aren't from rural states in the Midwest or the West often treat such people as if they were the Waltons or the Beverly Hillbillies.
I don't have a special place or ritual for writing songs, basically I write songs whenever an idea hits me, in my hotel room, on the road, in the plane.
Like all bands, the first two albums are always the ones most written about, and the most covered. When a band gets to their third of fourth album, the story of the band has already been told.
For me, it started as a child with one of those little wooden jigsaw maps of the U.S., where's there's crocodiles on Florida and apples on Washington state. That was my very first map.
My energy is undiminished. Someone said to me the other day, 'Are you retired?' and I said, 'Well, I'm just trying to prove that I'm not.' There's so many things to do.
When we went to Iraq, we stayed in one of Saddam's palaces. It was kind of creepy. If those walls could talk, there's no telling what stories they'd tell.
I'm not nearly as big as I was, but I attribute that to eating healthy. I'm just not a skinny girl, and I just want to give more opportunities to people like me.
