As someone whose music is connected to his personal growth, I feel an obligation to follow this muse wherever it leads.
The reason we fall in love with certain music and writing is we connect with it on a very personal level.
With everything that comes with music, obviously you lose privacy, personal relationships.
Most of my arguments with musicians through the years have had more to do with their attitude about music, or their attitude about their own lives, or their personal responsibility. Music has never really been the big centerpiece of the fight.
I am working on music and telling my personal story and sharing my talent on stage.
In many ways, 'Lords of Chaos' is my first real movie. I went deeper with this film than any of my other movies. I approached my other films like I did my music videos or commercials, like jobs. But 'Lords of Chaos' I wrote myself, and it’s a close, personal story.
Your story, background, the music you listen to, the emotions you feel, your lifestyle, goals - all of this is your personal style.
The most personal thing about me is my music. The most honest, pure thing in my whole life.
After talking to people and meeting them every day, I realize that a song can be written from one perspective with an objective in mind. What is crazy about it is that many different people can take one song a totally different way. That is so cool, since music is a universal thing and a very personal thing.
If you don't feel comfortable talking about really personal things in your music, you shouldn't do it. There's plenty of other things to write about.
I think you really have to remember what you loved about making music in the first place. Ultimately, people can be like, 'We've seen this dude in many movies,' but if they hear a song and they're feeling it, they can look past all the personal things and not hold it against you that you're also an actor.
So I'm writing more highly personalized and intellectual music, and I think that's good. It might take longer to find me, but I think that niche is perhaps underserved, so I'm going to serve that.
I don't view myself as a musician anymore - I view myself as a human being that functions as a musician when I'm functioning as a musician, but that's not 24 hours a day. That's really opened me up to even more perspectives because now I look at music, not from the standpoint of being a musician, but from the standpoint of being a human being.
I think, once recipes become digital, pirating a digital recipe and all the questions that you have with music and so forth will become pertinent to food as well.
Peter Pan is kind of this metaphor for someone or something that makes you feel at home, that brings you out of loneliness, that makes you free. And that's exactly what music does for me.
My critics are pretty tough. I've never been one of the music industry's pets.
My whole thing is having the perfect balance. Let's say I go to school. I have a day at school. That's the perfect amount of reality. Then I go and play music with my band. Then I go home and hang out with my family and my pets. I think that's the perfect amount of reality time.
When you face obstacles or go through different phases, I always relied on my music. I depend on my music, my teammates. So at the end of the day, having incredible music, for me, would keep me in the space I want to be as an artist.
It frustrated me at college that all the acts in the Top 10 were like The Moody Blues and Phil Collins. It was like why did we get stuck with the last generation's music, why can't we have our own?
I know Pandit Ravi Shankar was very upset with me, as I did not use his compositions in 'Gandhi.' I thought that the London Philharmonic Orchestra would prove more effective than his music. It was one of my biggest miscalculations.
