As a citizen of the great city of Chicago, I find it impossible to root against the White Sox. The White Sox organization has been much more consistent, in my lifetime at least, at putting a winning ballclub on the field.
Ultimately, running a band is about the relationships you have with people.
I mean my point as an artist is I'm on my own little weird journey across the sky here and whether or not anybody's listening, or listening to the degree I would like them to, at the end of the day has to be an inconsequential thing because I can't chase this culture.
I feel like I'm always fighting not to repeat myself.
The deeper I get into my life as a musician, I'm discovering that it becomes less and less about other people, and more about what I want to do. And that's a good place to be.
I didn't grow up with my mother, and so losing her for real was like, some sort of latent childhood, some sort of unresolved issue. When she left for real, it was sort of like, I was done.
Hey, Christian rock, if you want to be good, stop copying U2. U2 already did it. You know what I mean? There's a lot of U2-esque Christian rock.
The ideology of the Smashing Pumpkins was ultimately more valuable than the music of the Smashing Pumpkins. That's what critics can't put their finger on.
You've got to be ready to be in a great relationship.
Your basic person wants to talk about material culture, internet culture. I think about God, cats, nature.
My pat line about the Cubs and payroll is that the amount of merchandise the Cubs would sell off a world series championship would more than cover for a big payroll.
What most people do is try to find a comfortable persona that they're in alignment with and the public likes and appreciates them for.
My version, of course, is not this flag-waving, let's all get on the Jesus train and ride out of hell. I'm not that kind of guy. It's an embrace that life is good, worth living and yeah, it's not easy, but there are more pluses than minuses.
It's important for people to talk and get beyond the wall of Facebook and social media.
Saturn Return is just the return of your planets to their original position.
I've always been spiritual but I've never had a proper context, and it took me awhile to find the proper context. It's hard to realize you can have any kind of relationship with God you want... and so I now have a punk rock relationship with God.
Even if you don't believe in God, exploring fully the idea of a god or gods should pose no threat to you.
I think God is the most unexplored territory in rock and roll music.
Like any good tree that one would hope to grow, we must set our roots deep into the ground so that what is real will prosper in the Light of Love.
You just reach a point sometimes with somebody where it just doesn't work.
Most great records really start with the drums.
I mean there's certainly a lot of progressive rock and metal that exists at the underground level, which has its own vitality, as it should. But it seems to have lost its ability to really charge up the hill.
I just don't want to live in the past. I'm really disappointed by so many people of my generation who - in order to promote their new work, they have to constantly lean on their past. I don't want to be that type of artist... I see a lot of people out here doing really marginal music.
Rock in the mainstream culture has lost a lot of its mojo.
More than any audience in the world, Americans will cross their arms, stare at you and say, 'OK, whaddya got?' - no matter how many times you've proven it to them.
The funny thing about me that most people never really understand is that, at heart, I'm really a jock.
Rock & roll is not about what you play, it's about how you play it.
I'm very disappointed in my country right now, because I think we've kind of lost our moral compass.
I was fantasising about my own death, I started thinking what my funeral would be like and what music would be played, I was at that level of insanity.
I'd reached a point where there was a direct conflict between what I was trying to be and who I really was.
Personally, I think Jesus would like better bands.
Most people are living lives of sort of survival. And constantly posing an existential crisis, either through fantasy or oblivion, really has been pretty much explored in rock and roll. At least in the western version of rock n' roll.
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 don't think people are fans of me because I wrote hit songs. I think they're fans because I'm a lunatic or a weirdo. The hit songs came out of my idiosyncratic personality, not the other way around.
You have to be willing to deal with the ups and downs of the music, the ups and downs of the audience.
Somewhere between the intellectual idea of why we're attracted to certain things and the pragmatic reality is some form of ever-evolving truth.
