I like unkempt; I don't mind if I have holes in my jacket or whatever. I think people should look more the way they feel.
With time and experience comes a different perception of what's going on around you.
I'm not interested in a persona.
The way we're going about things and what we want to do, we feel it has to be a really pure essence of music. That's where you get the most out of it.
What I had to learn was, that I'm only responsible for my perception of things. The world's not out to get you. That's not the way it works.
I'm not a big fan of Robert Plant's lyrics or his singing.
There's the conventional wisdom, of which I have none, where you get a record deal, you get a publicist, you get a campaign, and you do the tour, but none of that adds up to things like nuance and subtlety and dynamic.
Now as a musician, if you have it within you, you can create your own reality. Believe me, it's a novelty.
I didn't want to be told what to do. I don't want to water down my music to fit into their formats. I know what rock and roll is to me, but everything's turning into one big commercial.
I make decisions based on my work, not based on meetings with my business managers, who I don't like to meet.
When I think about the real pioneers of the psychedelic movement in a musical sense, not just the culture, everything had a handmade sort of vibe to it. We're inventing our culture as we move along into this.
I'm interested in authentic experience and the essence of that creative place, and where those myths begin and where they become real on any level.
There have been multitudes of times in my career where I could have taken an easier road or a more commercial path, and I've been just like, 'That's not gonna make me happy.'
It's funny, after a while, you get tired of having to fight someone because they don't like the way you look.
My music is how I feel, and that's changed from being twenty years old to being forty-three years old.
The counterculture has nothing to do with Dolce & Gabbana having a 'Hippy Summer' or something. Street kids, and kids who want to live in any sort of counter-cultural experience other than what's being presented by the mainstream media or political climate, or 'normal' cultural climate, are never going to look like that.
In 2000, I fell in love. I had never felt anything like that before in my life. It kind of took me over.
Life is different than it was in the Nineties. I'm a dad, and there are other things I have to get done in an afternoon than just being an artist.
Part of getting older is realizing that you can integrate all these different areas of your life, rather than the adolescent mindset, which for me lasted a long time, which says, 'It's all or nothing.'
Singing isn't always about being on key; it's about emotionality.
