Musician

There is nothing wrong about being a rock n' roll guitar player.

We can play all we want, but if nobody's there, if nobody feels anything with what we're playing, then what's the purpose?

It's hard being in a band. It's hard being in a relationship like that. But at the end of the day, when you have great fans, as corny as that sounds, if the fans show up and the passion that they have, they're the ones that make us want to keep going.

You've got to love someone enough to hate them.

A band is like a marriage - you don't know why it works, but when it does, everything feels right.

I'm sad for younger bands that don't have a home that they know they can go to, like the twenty-five labels that used to be around that they know they can hang their hat and know that they'll give 'em three, four, five albums to develop.

When you are in this business and this career, it's hard for any one thing to engulf you.

Rihanna is so into rock, and she gives me an empty canvas to work with. I get to do wild solos and crunch up the rhythms. It's rock, it's R&B, it's hip-hop, it's funky - all totally up my alley.

We had a nightmare on our first album, and went through two producers. I decided, on the second album, to take the money that we were supposed to use for pre-production, and we went into a studio and cut the album with no producer. We finished the whole thing without telling the record company.

A band is like a marriage - you don't know why it works, but when it does, everything feels right.

You believe that you're going to be forever young.

You don't really write a hit song - you write a great song, and then, if the public decides it's a hit, they take over from there. The song becomes its own monster.

Having a baby is one of the most wonderful things in your life, as well as the hardest thing in your life.

We can play all we want, but if nobody's there, if nobody feels anything with what we're playing, then what's the purpose?

If you spend long enough with a bunch of guys, things will inevitably start to rankle. You're going to hate the way the singer comes into the room and opens the curtains 'cos he's done it too fast or whatever.

You don't really write a hit song - you write a great song, and then, if the public decides it's a hit, they take over from there. The song becomes its own monster.

Obviously the biggest change is that it's me by myself. When you don't have another band interpreting your songs or playing them the way that they have, it's bound to sound different.

It's hard to know exactly what it sounds like to me. I'm in the studio and I write it. and that's it.

Everybody used to be busy writing songs - great songs - that became hits. Now everybody's writing hits. Everybody's desperately writing a hit because they know they can't survive if they don't have a hit. Where in the past, we were writing a song like 'More Than Words' on a porch, not really believing it was gonna be a hit.

As opposed to touring for three years and then going into the studio and writing an album, I think this record is representative of a lot of everyday people.