As much as you put into it is as much as you get out of it.
What motivates us is always new music.
The touring part is really mixed. You love to play and you can't wait to go, but you don't want to leave.
While you're learning guitar, figure out the drums, too. Not only does it help you have great timing, but it helps you understand how a band works.
As for the first guitar I actually bought, I believe it was a Cherry Red Kramer! I think I bought it because Eddie Van Halen played Kramer, and I remember it had a Rockinger tremolo on it.
We've never written anything to have success with it. We've written songs that we love.
Everybody used to be busy writing songs - great songs - that became hits. Now everybody's writing hits. Everybody's desperately writing a hit because they know they can't survive if they don't have a hit. Where in the past, we were writing a song like 'More Than Words' on a porch, not really believing it was gonna be a hit.
Rihanna is so into rock, and she gives me an empty canvas to work with. I get to do wild solos and crunch up the rhythms. It's rock, it's R&B, it's hip-hop, it's funky - all totally up my alley.
Having a baby is one of the most wonderful things in your life, as well as the hardest thing in your life.
We'd tour for a year and a half and do an album and then tour for another year and a half and do another album. We thought we were invincible, but someone should have said, 'You guys need to take a little time off.'
You've got to love someone enough to hate them.
Who needs fan mail when you have the Internet?
When you are in this business and this career, it's hard for any one thing to engulf you.
There's two facets to writing a song. There's you sitting in your room writing the sentiments of the song; the lyrics, the melody and the changes, and then there's the part where you go into the studio and you put clothing on it.
Obviously the biggest change is that it's me by myself. When you don't have another band interpreting your songs or playing them the way that they have, it's bound to sound different.
My current project is my band, Population 1. We are writing, rehearsing and playing in Los Angeles.
Live are a really good band. I like Stone Temple Pilots, Radiohead I love. Even Oasis.
It's just a bunch of songs. I'm not trying to cure any major disease.
It's hard to know exactly what it sounds like to me. I'm in the studio and I write it. and that's it.
I wanted to do the whole album in black and white, and it really killed me that when you see it in the light it's got green in it. I don't know what the hell that was about.
