Well, I've been lucky. I've never gotten a voice polyp. I've never gotten nodes. But I do get sick, usually every tour, and to varying degrees. Sometimes it's a sinusitis.
I have always been fascinated by dark and mysterious stuff. I guess I have a pretty dark and gloomy side. Writing songs saves me from going completely gonzo.
The Odyssey is, indeed, one of the greatest of all stories, it is the original romance of the West; but the Iliad, though a magnificent poem, is not much of a story.
The way you get to know yourself is by the expressions on other people's faces, because that's the only thing that you can see, unless you carry a mirror about.
If someone comes to you and asks for help, and you can help them, you're supposed to help them. Why wouldn't you? You have been put in the position somehow to be able to help this person.
I scored a movie called 'Endangered Species'. I worked on another movie called 'Staying Alive'. A German film called 'Fire and Ice'.
The idea to do the album only on keyboards kind of happened by accident. I was quite happy with the sound and felt it really didn't need more instruments, so I didn't use them.
Sometimes when you make a record and it's not successful, you just don't want to go through that process for a while. You want to have your wounds heal.
I listened to John Denver and Simon & Garfunkel. Edith Piaf was a huge favourite. Then I discovered musicals - I loved 'Les Miserables' - and, at about 14, I started listening to David Gray.
I try not to think too much about where my voice comes from. I'm channeling characters and emotion to come up with beautiful words that tell a story.
As soon as the news of the Cabot voyages reached the King of Portugal he arranged to send an expedition of discovery to the far north-west, perhaps to find a northern sea route to Eastern Asia.
The biggest misconception about me is the bad-boy image that everyone stuck me into due to my tattoos, drug days and the constant changes I make with my hair color.
You've got your Justins who have all the back flipping dancers and stuff, and then you've got Lemar, and he totally moves you without having to do all of that, and he's gorgeous.
When we were 15, my brother and I were getting really into Nirvana, Green Day, and The Beastie Boys. We started going to shows and realized we really wanted to be on stage.
Wherever there is one job on the verge of being lost, I will fight to save it. Wherever there is one company looking to grow in West Virginia, I will fight to make that growth a reality.
I can assure you that my wife and I - every penny of income we've ever had, our taxes were paid in West Virginia.
I don't have to worry about any pop sensibility. I can write adult songs, and I don't have to worry about choruses and hook lines.
The CD, it should be noted, was born out of greed. It was devised to prop up record sales on the expectation of people replenishing their record collections with CDs of albums they had already purchased.
Metallica is going to be one of those bands you look back on in the year 2008, that people will still listen to the way I still listen to Zeppelin and Sabbath albums.
After playing with Rob Zombie, I was ready to go, 'OK, this is as far as I'm taking this bass-playing thing. This is the end of the road.' I was ready to kind of hang it up.
We singers have a different level of responsibility from other musicians. We have words that we must convey; we have meanings that we must convey through these lyrics.
