My brother brought home 'At San Quentin' when I was about 7, and we played it over and over again.

I think the concept of commercials, for example, I have had offers to do songs in different commercials, and it is not what I have liked.

I always looked at rock & roll as the voice of regular people, of an economic group not in charge.

There's this existential argument that comes in, at some point, when you're over-thinking the songwriting process. There's no guarantee that the more time you spend or the more you concentrate on certain aspects that that's going to produce a better result, especially in the arts.

Hip-hop kind of absorbed rock in terms of the attitude and the whole point of why rock was important music. Young people felt like rock music was theirs, from Elvis to the Beatles to the Ramones to Nirvana. This was theirs; it wasn't their parents'. I think hip-hop became the musical style that embraces that mentality.

One thing that I have thought ever since Temple of the Dog is that I would never say no to an interesting collaboration, and that's partly where Audioslave came from.

I never thought of myself as being the singer that wanted to create an identity and then stick to that.

Most frontmen are not born hams like David Lee Roth. We're more like Joey Ramone: awkward geeks who somehow find our place in the world on the stage.

They're a great audience, kids. They actually respond. They don't have the references that adults have, so everything is immediate. It's always interesting to see what they react to in whatever I'm working on at the moment. And they don't even want to discuss why. That's a lesson to remember: My son doesn't care about why.

My first favorite band that made music important to me was the Beatles. I was a little kid. I didn't know who was singing what song or who wrote what song.

I just kind of went into the blue-collar workforce at a really young age and discovered music, in terms of being a musician, around the same time. The good news is, I was probably 17 when I knew that's what I was going to do with the rest of my life, no matter what that meant.

I would look at older blues musicians who just keep going into their seventies. They keep doing it until they drop dead. And I've always felt like that's what I want to do. I've felt that since the day I was able to start playing music for a living. I don't see the point of thinking about retiring because it's not work to begin with.

The fans own the records and listen to them and love them. It becomes the soundtrack to some part of their lives, and we don't control that. To me, that's what's exciting about what we do.

One of the Robinson brothers from the Black Crowes turned me on to Nick Drake.

If you're an American kid, you can't help but be influenced by Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and the Rolling Stones because they're always on the radio.

I think it's important for fans to know that but if I'm doing something that inspires me musically then I think it will inspire someone else too.

In the United States, workouts tend to focus on body image and how you look. For me, it's really all about the brain.

To a degree, rock fans like to live vicariously and they like that, music fans in general, but when indie music sort of came into prominence in the early '90s, a lot of it was TV-driven, too, where if you saw the first Nirvana video, you're looking at three guys that look like people you go to school with.

When you break out the acoustic guitar, the words are the focal point unless you're the Jimi Hendrix of the acoustic guitar. So the words have to have meaning.

There was about two years where I was more or less agoraphobic and didn't deal with anybody, didn't talk to anybody, didn't have any friends at all.

An acoustic show is all about you, and any little nuance or mistake is amplified.

Companies figured out that the easiest way to make money was to reissue records that the accounting department had paid for years ago and already made a profit.

There was this moment when we made 'Superunknown': the Seattle music scene had suddenly ended up on an international stage with huge success.

When Soundgarden formed, we were post-punk - pretty quirky.

I really had to come to the conclusion, the sort of humbling conclusion that, guess what, I'm no different than anybody else: I've got to sort of ask for help - not something I ever did, ever. And then part two of that is, like, accept it when it comes, and, you know, believe what people tell me.

I have a hard time narrowing things down to ten or 12 songs. If I walk off stage in anything less than two hours, it just feels strange. It feels early.

Due to irresolvable personality conflicts as well as musical differences, I am permanently leaving the band Audioslave. I wish the other three members nothing but the best in all of their future endeavours.

The first time I ever went to Hawaii, I was listening to island music, thinking, 'I could've been born here, and I'm pretty sure I would never play that.'

The freedom I have as a U.S. citizen is unparalleled. Despite the fact people may not like American passports, having that passport affords me more freedoms than any other passport could.

When you start your first band and it has an impact on the rest of the world you go through a lot with those guys and you become very protective of that legacy.

I think back to my childhood, and I remember running around as a kid. We were all running around then. It wasn't about getting into shape. It's just what we did.

I had to teach myself to let go of the conventional rock way of playing guitar and singing. Some things you wouldn't expect to work, did and some things won't ever work.

Rock never meant the same thing to everyone, but when I was growing up in the late seventies, everyone could identify the five, ten bands that formed the center.

What formed me as a musician, a songwriter, the sound and personality of my band, a whole lot of that happened well before 1991.

I play Texas Hold'em on my Blackberry. I have amassed a fortune on that. I have almost 30 million dollars from playing. It is unreal.

There's a lot of music that I don't like.

I'm sure I could start a band tomorrow that would have different influences and would want to do something completely different than anything I've done.

I've had a long career and I want to continue to have a long career. The way to do that is not to go away.

I was going to be a musician, no matter what it took. I supported myself with blue-collared jobs so I could write music and be in a band and play shows. I even got into an underground art scene. I was going to do whatever.

I am happy in my own skin.

I can fix dishwashers. I was brought up in a castle with no money and lots of imagination. I learnt a lot about plumbing at an early age.

When I'm home I love to get the wellies on and take the dog for a walk.

I've been travelling all my life.

I always bring divining rods when I'm on tour because you can change energy streams by moving furniture around your hotel room.

I spent a lot of my childhood saying goodbye because I went to boarding school. I didn't resent my parents for sending me there so young as I understood the limitations of the education system in Africa, where we lived at the time.

I studied French and English literature because I liked it.

I thought I would be an overnight star when I had a hit record in Brazil with my first album - but things didn't work out quite like that.

When you're a solo artist and you're not doing well, it can be pretty tough. So when success does come, it feels like you've earned it.

My house is a very calm and beautiful place and is full of positive energy.

You get pigeonholed. It's a kind of safety device for people who don't really want to look any further outside of the box, but I'm actually impregnable as far as what people say about me.