The movie business is very difficult but the music business is just impossible. So I'll play in bands and record and play songs with other people but for me it's a form of expression that all I need is me. I don't need cameras or agents I can just have a piano and sing and feel totally verified.
It was my 16th birthday - my mom and dad gave me my Goya classical guitar that day. I sat down wrote this song and I just knew that that was the only thing I could ever really do - write songs and sing them to people.
If you look over the years the styles have changed - the clothes the hair the production the approach to the songs. The icing to the cake has changed flavors. But if you really look at the cake itself it's really the same.
Some songs you get. Some songs you may not. And I think that's the beauty of art: to question and to ask to understand the deeper meaning after two or three or four listenings.
Music as many people have said is the universal language. Of course points are made which make you think about things but ultimately it makes you feel. And that's why people remember more songs that have meant something during their life than films. They start to define periods in your life and that's kind of the beauty of it.
When I look at the majority of my own songs they really came from my own sense of personal confusion or need to express some pain or beauty - they were coming from a universal and personal place.
Sid Vicious began the age of participation in which everyone could be the artist. Sid proved that you don't have to play well to be the star. You can play badly or not even at all. I endorsed that attitude. If you can't write songs no problem - simply steal one and change it to your taste.
It was just like a dream. I could have ended up with an album that's not all that different from anything else coming out of Nashville. Mutt made the difference. He took these songs my attitude my creativity and colored them in a way that is unique.
Real popular culture is folk art - coalminers' songs and so forth.
There is nothing in the world of art like the songs mother used to sing.