Alice Ripley was someone who had had a huge effect on me when I had gotten out of college and decided that this was the road I wanted to take - to write musicals.
Most people have been touched by the battles of mental illness in some way or another. It's either going on in their families or next door to them, or they know people who have experienced it.
Any musical is a major undertaking.
The world of cheerleading is incredibly demanding, incredibly physical, and it has a lot of risk. The way people fly through the air is so thrilling to watch, but it takes hours and hours of practice and training.
It's all about the audience and the people who support your work and respond to it. So, anytime I hear that 'Next to Normal' is affecting people, it goes beyond my wildest dreams of what I set out to do when I started to write 'Next to Normal.'
I do not take my job lightly.
I was meant to be a composer. I was meant to meet my wife and have our three children. There were a number of factors that led to all of that happening, which, if you mapped it out, you would say, 'God, a lot had to go right for all of those things to line up.'
There's no better feeling as a writer than to see your piece going beyond what you can have ever imagined. And a wonderful way for that to happen is for new audiences to discover it.
It's the basic rule of musicals: Characters sing when their emotions become so intense that they can't do anything else.
One of the arrangements I'm really proud of is '21 Guns' because the chorus has this descending bass line with a suspended type of progression that immediately screamed 'Bach' to me.
I don't think you are ever really done working on something, especially if you can get back into rehearsal.
My love of Green Day is on so many levels. It's their genius for songwriting, the fact that they write about very important subjects, both personal and political, and they're just a timeless band.
In the back of my mind, when we were developing 'Next to Normal,' I always heard Alice Ripley.
'American Idiot' is not only one of my favorite albums of all time, it's become an anthem of a generation.
I'm very influenced by the work of George Martin and the string arrangements that he did for the Beatles.
I love musical comedy; I love comedy in general, and I have varied taste in terms of books, film, theatre, and culture.
I didn't want to box myself into writing just rock music because you can try to force it into moments that don't want it.
'Cabaret' was one of the first pieces of musical theater I saw that showed the possibilities of what musical theater can do.
The thing about 'Next to Normal' is that it really is an ensemble piece for six actors. They are all asked to do very important things in the show, and I think all six are equal in terms of telling the story.
I was inspired to be a singer/songwriter from an early age.
