For years, I wasn’t feeling good about myself. My head wasn’t clear. I was doing nothing productive.
The focus on my wife and my children, it really helps me make sense of the music side of it somehow.
‘Black Hole Sun’ was written in a car when I was driving home from the studio one night. Pretty much everything that you hear was written in my head.
Fans should be encouraged that I want to try different things.
My history of singing has always probably been closer to a David Bowie approach than, for example, an AC/DC approach.
Seattle very much benefited from this geography where it was a town nobody had really heard of in terms of a music scene. So we had that factor of being a new discovery.
A lot of people get into alternative music as part of their identity. It’s something that isn’t the mainstream, that their brothers and sisters don’t know about, and that their parents don’t like. It’s something they can have as their own.
I used to hate playing Seattle shows.
I never look back, ever. I’m always looking ahead, working on the next thing.
It just doesn’t get any more stripped down than going out totally alone and doing songs.
I never went to high school. I never really finished eighth grade. I was kicked out of seventh grade once and eighth grade twice. Mainly for not showing up and not doing it. Then I went to an alternative high school for part of what would have been ninth grade and part of what would have been 10th grade.
I always looked at rock & roll as the voice of regular people, of an economic group not in charge.
When I met my wife Vicky’s family, I had to go out of my way to convince them, to show them, that I wasn’t anything like their idea of a musician.
Some of the most brilliant things that someone might do could happen in three minutes because it’s something that just occurs to them. And then, there’s the example of really chipping away at something to create something great. I don’t believe that one is more reliable than the other.
I’m a huge fan of film and always have been.
‘Superunknown’ was one of the most dramatic shifts in what we were doing musically. I don’t think I realized it at the time.
When all of a sudden you’re successful and sought after overnight, you are instantly opened to a lot of sides of humanity that the average person is never going to see. And those can often be pretty disheartening, and it can make somebody pretty lonely.
‘The Beatles’ did whatever they wanted. They were a collection of influences adapted to songs they wanted to write. George Harrison was instrumental in bringing in Indian music. Paul McCartney was a huge Little Richard fan. John Lennon was into minimalist aggressive rock.
When I was eight, my piano teacher played seven or eight notes, and I sang them. She stopped and looked at me in shock! That was the first time I’d gotten that reaction. I’d had looks of horror, but never shock in a positive way.
Children should always feel like the adults are living in this world to nurture them, to take care of them, to protect them from any bad thing that might come.
There was a period in my life where most of my musical career was spent in a band that was very aggressive, and there was sort of a wall of volume all the time.
I don’t get in there and create a character. It’s more of a voice that I hear living inside the music.
I’m sure I could start a band tomorrow that would have different influences and would want to do something completely different than anything I’ve done.
I got in touch with the creative process between the age of 14 and 16, mainly because I was alone so much.
Bands work in a way where everyone, at some point, has to have a similar idea of how you do things.
Music is supposed to be inspired.
Oftentimes, especially in the context of an acoustic song, I’m motivated to write by some amount of melancholy.
I prefer not to use any machines. I focus a lot on cardio, which is what I do when I’m on stage. I also am into isometric workouts.
My brother brought home ‘At San Quentin’ when I was about 7, and we played it over and over again.
My favorite Bob Dylan record is the very first one where he sings one Bob Dylan song and the rest of them are his interpretations of the Dust Bowl-era folk songs, or even going back as far as the mass influx of people coming into the U.S. during the gold rush. His interpretations of those songs are incredible.
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