When I write, I tend toward melancholy, and the few times that I’ve tried pure joy in music, it doesn’t really work that well. The joy can be through catharsis. I think that’s what I do well, and observation.

The whole point of the punk-rock thing was that “We’re not special. We just have a voice.”

I distinctly remember a conversation with my band in the van where I was having a complete meltdown. It was 1984, I think, and I was huddled in the back corner of our van and saying, “I can’t do this. I can’t do this. I can’t do this.” I didn’t want to play any more shows. I just wanted to stop.

The whole punk ethic was do-it-yourself, and I’ve always been very literal, especially as a kid. When they said that anybody can do this, I was like, ‘OK, that’s me.’

But I think the one thing that I can say about us is that we’re very consistent about certain things and part of that is our desire to do the very best work that we can and not rest on our laurels, or not allow formula to come into what we do.

There is always something of the writer in the work but I don’t think Melville had to be swallowed by a whale to write a great novel. If I had lived the lives of all the characters of the songs I’ve written, that would truly be an extraordinary story.

It was ’86. We were a big enough name and we had enough cache that MTV wanted to play us, so, along with Michael Jackson and Madonna, they played our upside-down, black-and-white, backward, single unedited footage of a rock quarry with orange letters over the top of it and called it art.

And I don’t expect anyone can bring about a revolution in the way that Bob Dylan did – and really didn’t – in the 1960s.

Here’s a truck stop instead of St. Peter’s.

I am not an autobiographical writer. I’ll take little elements here and there from things that I’ve actually experienced-counting eyelashes on a sleeping beauty, for example.