I grew up as a swimmer. And my brother was a football player and I played football.
I could have played water polo in high school instead of football. I would have gone to Stanford like my other buddies from Irvine who played water polo and ended up going to Stanford, you know.
My experience with playing in odd time signatures was progressive rock and learning King Crimson songs as a kid coming up and maybe learning Pink Floyd, 'Money,' that kind of thing.
I've played in front of a hundred thousand people and it's easy for me to squint my eyes and blur my vision and then all the people just turn into a giant piece of pizza or something. Everyone becomes one, you know.
Guitars, there was rock 'n' roll. Saxophone, jazz. Now we have the computer and there's this electronic thing happening in music that is somewhat superhuman.
I started taking vocal lessons, I always loved the challenge of playing my instrument and trying to sing.
Ultimately it's a blessing to be able to make music.
Generally speaking people that come to an amphitheater show, they're not coming to see the opening band.
I love being a dad, I love my wife and my kids are amazing to me and I love the challenge of making music and family work.
I'm still really proud of Rage as much as I am of Audioslave. I still love it when I turn on the radio and I hear a Rage song. I love that.
With Rage, we wrote riff rock and had rap vocals, so we didn't really concern ourselves with melody for the most part.
I love my tattoo and I think it looks great. It's like an old pair of jeans, it's beat up. I remember when I first got it outlined. I'm like 'why don't more guys do this?' Then I realized the pain.
With Audioslave, it's all about melody and chord progressions.
The computer has always been this ominous, scary thing that came into music, for me, in the early '90s, right when I first started playing music.
For me it's liberating to be able to look somebody in the eyes and know that they can't see my eyes. I've always thought that when I would see Slipknot playing.
It's insane for me to say this, but I've never been in a room with anyone that's more talented on the electric guitar than Brendan O'Brien.
I think you still need to use music as a way to say something that's important, and I'm always gonna do that. Always.
No matter what you're doing, whether you have a business with someone, a band with someone, when you feel confident that your idea is going to be embraced, and even if it isn't, that everyone is going to work on it as hard as they can, then that's a great thing.
A great thing of getting older is coming to terms and saying sorry and trying to repair damage that happened in the past.
I absolutely feel that Rage failed.
