Sometimes I would write something that was so private, people would say, 'Make it more universal.' I never liked that idea. I always thought the more personal a song was, the more people would want to hear it.
It's too heart-wrenching doing the solo thing. I throw myself into it and get so excited, and then 2000 people buy it and you're, like, 'Oh. I guess it's not that good after all.'
I'm not really calculated enough or trained enough as a musician or songwriter to create a style in order to please people. Ultimately, I just have to do what I like to do.
I grew up listening to pop; I grew up listening to '60s pop music, the Beatles, the Monkees, Herman's Hermits and all that stuff. So I had a very strong background of listening to great pop music.
I didn't read many comics as a kid - I've always been a really fast reader, and I would fly through a comic book in a few minutes and be so mad that it ended so quickly. But now that I've been in the business, I tend to look at the panels so much more carefully, and realize that so much of it is about the art; I don't think I got that before.
A lot of comic conventions go way beyond comic books and include other parts of pop culture, like celebrities and science fiction and movies and books. So I go to them either as a celebrity, or as a fan, because I'm a big sci-fi geek.
I made the big turnaround in the early Nineties when I started hearing all the tenth generation punk bands like Green Day and Offspring and all those people. It just made me fall in love with punk again and remember my roots, and since that time I've always wanted to do more of that kind of music again.
The whole punk scene is, of course, responsible for the Go-Go's ever getting created. Because before punk rock happened, you couldn't start a band if you didn't know how to play an instrument. But when punk happened it was like, 'Oh, it doesn't matter if you can play or not. Go ahead, make a band.' And that's exactly what the Go-Go's did.
I did the co-writing thing all through the '90s and I got one hit out of it - a Keith Urban song called 'But For The Grace Of God' - but then I got burnt out.
Believe me, I've totally blown any kind of so-called reputation I may have had. I really don't care. I think that's one of the joys of getting older; you just stop caring about things like that.
