Paul Westerberg

It's like, it's up to the people to fall in love with the song. The record company can only do so much.

Reading music is like listening to flowers. I don't understand the concept.

A rock'n'roll band needs to be able to get under people's skin. You should be able to clear the room at the drop of a hat.

Actually, I've done it the other way so many times where you rehearse the band and you do the whole thing with lights, the show and the crew - everything. Then you see what happens and you're already committed to dates. I'm just sort of putting out feelers this way.

Although, my experience when I've been depressed, not only am I too depressed to sit down and write a song, I'm too depressed to pick up my feet. So if you can at least write about it, you're halfway away from it.

Any musician who can stop may be a musician, but they're no artist. If it's in your blood, it can't stop flowing.

I don't think there's anything that will make me stop doing it. There may be a time when it's not available to anyone. You may have to come listen at my basement window... but I can't stop.

I forever felt that I've fallen right between the crack of way too young for the first generation of classic rock 'n' roll and too old to be brand-new. It's hard.

I have my own language and it's high time I put a little of it out there.

I sat through Ladies and Gentlemen, the Rolling Stones like three times at the Skyway when it came out.

I think it should be evident by now, but I'm as lost as anyone.

I think of the Replacements only when they're brought up to me. For two years, I'm at home, they don't really cross my mind. I still hear them on the radio. I'm not ashamed of anything we did.

I'm beyond caring what anyone expects of me anymore.

I've had more people in my life take their lives than... I think it's out of proportion with most people. I think a lot of them gravitate towards me because of the music.

It's fun, but the fun is where it always was. I mean, it's still fun to strap on my Les Paul in the basement and turn up the Marshall amp. I'm still 15. I still enjoy that as much as I ever did.

It's my first record since my son is old enough to understand and I can't even show it to him. Yes, it's affected me, probably in the opposite of how anyone would have thought.

Right now, it hasn't affected my music other than the fact that I don't have time to write any of it. That's no different from when I first started and I lived at home. I would play the guitar in the afternoon and then my mom or my dad would come home and I'd have to quit.

So I figured in keeping with the record, I'd do something off the wall which is show up for free and wing it... I don't know, I'm just going to play some songs. I think it'll be fun.

Stick with your heart and you'll be fine.

The hack songwriter will write the absolute truth every single word, whether it makes a great song or not.

Then again, I think about high school every day and I think about being a little kid every day too.

You know, he likes me because I'm his son. I have to go long and far to find someone who knows me just as me, rather than me the songwriter or whatever.

The truth is overrated.

Oddly, when I started to make the record, I wasn't aware I was making a record. I just was sort of disgusted with the whole thing and sequestered myself in the basement and started playing the piano just for something to do.

The best I can say is that it's better for me to write about despair and darkness than to be incapable of getting off the sofa. It's better to write about suicide than to contemplate it too heavily.