I think I gravitate towards rock 'n' roll as a playground where I can say anything.
The Bible was so revolutionary and against all that came before it. It was a force for siding with the oppressed and a rebellion against hierarchical, ancient societies. Now it's institutionalized and all the life has been sucked out of it.
I think most of the work of songwriting is thinking of great phrases - I'm addicted, always on the hunt for a really great phrase.
I'm certainly not interested in religion for religion's sake or for some kind of structure or stabilizing force. Religion is supposed to be for God's sake and God is an unpredictable, wild thing.
I'm an amateur at music and an amateur at most things. I like the idea of offering some music and some records and a website to people who feel perplexed.
I had so many secrets and so much social repression throughout my life. I guess I'm just a shy person and feel like my true self is unacceptable to most people.
Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dylan I heard when I was 13. It was one of those things where it was like, "Hey, the world is much bigger than you imagined as a little kid."
I thought [ as a kid], "Maybe I don't want to start a punk band necessarily. I just want to learn to be a great songwriter," and got really into trying to figure out how that could be possible.
I was like, "Who the hell is Bob Dylan?" I was going to learn one song to appease my mom and alphabetically the first song in the book was "Absolutely Sweet Marie." When I heard it, it was like "Oh, there is something going on here. It's not like my parents' boring music that I don't care about. This is totally electrifying."
I wanted to get a guitar [when I was 13] so I could play punk songs because kid taught me power chords at summer camp. He was like, "You could play all punk songs if you just learn this chord and just move it around on the guitar".
What really is wild about rock 'n' roll? Nothing. It's so banal and so part of corporate culture. It threatens to lose all its life.
I think [rock'n'roll] essence is what made it good and has a lot in common with what originally made monotheism good - it's against everything that is fixed, all the social structures that you can't go past.
