I think that one of the main privileges of what I do, which I am just starting to learn, is to have the ability to travel all over the world and experience different cultures.

My favorite Bob Dylan record is the very first one where he sings one Bob Dylan song and the rest of them are his interpretations of the Dust Bowl-era folk songs, or even going back as far as the mass influx of people coming into the U.S. during the gold rush. His interpretations of those songs are incredible.

That's the miracle of music. No one can reinterpret a Picasso, but a song can be remixed and covered and interpreted in an infinite number of ways. It's a living thing.

Being solo really lends itself to different interpretations - and everything is in the moment and on a whim. I never realised how far out you can go when you are by yourself.

One of the main dilemmas that's pretty common to a lot of people who are getting older is the idea that maybe there's a finish line and that maybe there's a time in your life when you start to slow down and stop and smell the roses and just kind of settle into what will be a comfortable period in your life.

There wasn't a key moment when I knew I wanted to quit.

Stone Temple Pilots, Bush, and Silverchair are taking the simplest elements of Soundgarden, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam and melding them into one homogenous thing.

I think there needs to be a global focus on people taking care of people.

'The Beatles' did whatever they wanted. They were a collection of influences adapted to songs they wanted to write. George Harrison was instrumental in bringing in Indian music. Paul McCartney was a huge Little Richard fan. John Lennon was into minimalist aggressive rock.

I don't listen to Beyonce or Jennifer Hudson records.

You can really walk around a song and completely, if it's a good song, look at it from a lot of different angles. Johnny Cash with Rick Rubin illustrated that perfectly.

It's great when you play to an audience that knows the words to all your songs, and sings them back to you.

When I was eight, my piano teacher played seven or eight notes, and I sang them. She stopped and looked at me in shock! That was the first time I'd gotten that reaction. I'd had looks of horror, but never shock in a positive way.

If you wanna make money in music, you're better off being on the business end of it a lot of the time. And also as a musician, if you do make money, it means you had to bite and scratch and kick the whole way to not get ripped off, because at every corner, there's somebody there waiting to trip you up and take a bigger chunk.

Radio and TV can still push a band, but things need to be shaken up. There is the Internet, but mostly what I see there is little kids on YouTube playing music.

A lot of people get into alternative music as part of their identity. It's something that isn't the mainstream, that their brothers and sisters don't know about, and that their parents don't like. It's something they can have as their own.

A lot of what attracted people to Nirvana was that they were like the people you went to high school with.

Whenever anyone sends me a link to a band, saying, 'These guys sound exactly like Soundgarden,' it's always some super simple sludge riff with a singer that sings high and screechy. And it's really awful.

I never look back, ever. I'm always looking ahead, working on the next thing.

When you're out on the road touring and touring and then making records, you're just constantly looking forward, constantly working. You don't really stop to look at where you are or where you've been.

I'm not usually in a talkative mode.

I never wrote music or arranged songs or lyrics when I was under the influence of anything but coffee. That's not gone away.

I'm interested in where I'm going and the people I am there to see. Going to Cuba was a great example of that, and the succession of going into Cuba, which is not a very easy place to get into, and playing music for people who have never seen a live rock concert outdoors like that.

I've always liked depressing music because a lot of times, listening to it when you're down can actually make you feel less depressed. Also, even though a person may have problems with depression, sometimes you can actually be kind of comfortable in that space because you know how to operate within it.

I feel like you're not a real musician or entertainer if you can't go into a room, pick up an instrument and entertain people.

The focus on my wife and my children, it really helps me make sense of the music side of it somehow.

The sense of anger I had when I was younger is something I thought would never go away. Over time, it's something you get almost bored with.

I wasn't good in school. I didn't do sports. I sat in the bedroom and listened to records. Because the Beatles did whatever they wanted to, I took that as a kid and said, 'That's what rock is.'

A true musician, like Johnny Cash, should be able to walk into a room with nothing but an instrument and capture people's attention for two hours.

I got in touch with the creative process between the age of 14 and 16, mainly because I was alone so much.

When you're young, playing drums is immediately satisfying 'cause whether or not you know how to play anything, the bottom line is that you're pounding on something, so you're happy about it.

Once you sit in front of people and start playing songs, it's all on you. No matter what happens, it's entirely your responsibility the entire time. I like that intensity.

When all of a sudden you're successful and sought after overnight, you are instantly opened to a lot of sides of humanity that the average person is never going to see. And those can often be pretty disheartening, and it can make somebody pretty lonely.

When I started writing songs for Temple of the Dog, I went to my room with my acoustic guitar, and I was happy staying in that mode. It was more chordal based and more lyric driven. I enjoyed not making riff-based songs built around a guitar idea.

Music is supposed to be inspired.

There's something about losing friends, particularly young people, where it's not something that you get over. I don't believe there's a healing process.

It's about trying to step out of being patterned and closed off and reclusive, which I've always had a problem with. It's about attempting to be normal and just go out and be around other people and hang out. I have a tendency to sometimes be pretty closed off and not see people for long periods of time and not call anyone.

If I'm going to go out to be a solo artist, it's because I want to do something different without having to wait on someone else's schedule or hobbies or be limited by other people's prejudices. I'd be kind of stupid not to exercise that.

There's sadness to anyone that dies before their time, and specifically ones that seem to affect people in a positive way. It doesn't matter if it's Whitney Houston or a nameless, faceless person on the street. That's just as big of a tragedy for me.

I prefer not to use any machines. I focus a lot on cardio, which is what I do when I'm on stage. I also am into isometric workouts.

I can go from one extreme to another, from playing at the Sydney Opera House on the Songbook tour to shows with Soundgarden at Voodoo Fest, all in a week.

Children should always feel like the adults are living in this world to nurture them, to take care of them, to protect them from any bad thing that might come.

To me, music shouldn't be ego-driven. When you go out on stage and play songs, it is. But when you're sitting in a room, writing songs, it's a completely different process. It's a completely different place. It's a creative place, a musical place. It has nothing to do with who likes what.

For years, I wasn't feeling good about myself. My head wasn't clear. I was doing nothing productive.

To me, R&B means Aretha Franklin, who is otherworldly.

I felt very proud to be part of a music scene that was changing the face of commercial music and rock music internationally, but I also felt like it was necessary for Soundgarden - as it was for all of these Seattle bands - to prove that we deserve to be on an international stage, and we weren't just part of a fad that was based on geography.

When you have four guys in a room writing songs, it different. It's great - that's what makes a band a band. Audioslave was great.

'Superunknown,' maybe more than most albums, didn't reveal itself to be what it was until the very end - literally until we were three quarters of the way through mixing it.

You can't always make out the words I sing with Soundgarden.

When you become a parent, you leave a lot of things behind and refocus, maybe on how simple life really is and what few things there really are to worry about. And everything else can go by the wayside.