I love ABC Family!
The exciting thing about Bleachers and fun. are they're different, and they're aesthetically different in many ways. But it's also like my role is very different, and that's cool.
I've never really identified with the way a typical alpha male views women. It's always an awkward forum for me to hang out with another guy and talk about girls, because I can't really find a way to fit in.
You can be a man who loves a woman but love someone the way a gay man loves another man or a woman loves a woman.
When I started playing in bands, we had to be apologetic for what we did. We had to be apologetic because the mainstream was so bad.
As straight Americans we have two choices: we can choose to sit back and enjoy our rights as we have them, or we can realize that it is actually not freedom at all when our friends, family, neighbors, and colleagues do not share these basic rights.
Great songs come out of people's bedrooms; they come out of studios; there's no formula for it.
I want to be able to do work where I think it's very forward, but I also want it to exist in a big way and have an effect on a lot of people.
So many boys and girls talk the same way, listen to the same music, look the same. If I'm out, I'll notice the person who looks different before I notice the person who's, 'really hot.'
I just work a lot. I just remember recording in a hotel room in Malaysia. I work on planes, I work on buses. A lot of times when I'm backstage in the hotel or on the bus, I would have new ideas.
You get to a point where everything is so important. One day you have 'Letterman,' and the next day you're at the MTV Movie Awards, and the next day you have a sold-out show for over 15,000 people. You can't cancel anything, because it's just too much to let everyone down, which is an interesting thing about being in a bigger band.
Social paralysis is strong and stands firmly in the way of change on the ground level. As allies, we have to prepare ourselves to step into the fire when necessary, even - and especially - when said fire is merely a still-lit cigarette tossed carelessly onto the street.
Of course, the majority of us would speak up in the face of outrageous bigotry, but do we speak up in a social situation when someone casually refers to something as 'gay'? If we don't, we are standing with the homophobes whom we are quietly fighting.
The only people playing the roles of classic rock stars are hip-hop artists, now. Kanye's stage persona, and the way he approaches making albums, and the way he wants to be better than everyone else? That's reminiscent of Freddie Mercury. That's reminiscent of the Beatles.
I've ended up on some website list or some other list for super right-wing people. They've been tweeting some pretty rude stuff at me, so I think there's a sect of America out there that doesn't like certain opinions and can really take their claws out when they don't like what you're saying.
I think it's nice to do work that is vaguely compromising to your health because it means you really care about it.
My father played guitar, so I always wanted to play for that reason. But I think the biggest reason was just the '90s in general - growing up listening to the Smashing Pumpkins, Green Day and bands like that, and going to concerts and thinking it was the coolest thing in the world.
I just don't think it's good to be around too much creative energy other than your own.
Bleachers comes from a different place. It's personal. It's just me putting myself out there as myself. It's very intense.
People identify with other people for different reasons, and I personally am really comfortable around lesbians because, in some ways, we view women the same way.
