When you're doing a film, narrative is your most important tool, but it's a tool to create a cinematographic experience, to create those moments that are beyond narrative, that are almost an abstraction of that moment that hits your psyche.
It's a relief to hear the rain. It's the sound of billions of drops, all equal, all equally committed to falling, like a sudden outbreak of democracy. Water, when it hits the ground, instantly becomes a puddle or rivulet or flood.
I still get really nervous, though, before each performance. It kind of hits about 15 minutes before we go onstage - sometimes I don't even want to go on. But once I'm onstage I'm fine.
It is not about writing those hits again. I am sure I could write them, but it is about the sensibilities.
YouTube clips get millions, billions of hits. Reality TV programs have their own channels. How can movies attempt to compete with these kinds of numbers? And do we even need to? Are we scaring ourselves by unnecessary comparisons, by not comparing apples with apples?
You just take your hits on the chin and move on, that's life.
The hits always wind up being the songs with big, high choruses. They're the ones too high to sing every night - not that you'll ever, ever hear me complain about having to try.
I would hate to go out as a legend on tour just playing all the back hits.
If you look at the big rock hits I've had - 'High on Emotion,' for example - the songs I write have to have a real meaning. There has to be depth.
The only time I've ever been knocked out in my entire life was in a rugby game when I was about 13. I used to play on the wing. The opposing winger has the ball in his hand and he's running full speed at me. I go down to tackle him and he jumps up and his knee hits my temple.
