I'm an Australian, and when I grew up much of my influences were American - blues music and country music, all that sort of thing.
As Australians, we see the law as inherently bad. We have a real inherent distaste for authority in our makeup.
Musicians are at the bottom of the creative pyramid and authors are at the top, and many people think it's unacceptable for someone to attempt to jump from the bottom to the top of the pyramid.
If you look around, complacency is the great disease of your autumn years, and I work hard to prevent that.
The idea of songwriting is a transformative thing, and what I do with songwriting is take situations that are quite ordinary and transform them in some way. Apart from things like the murder ballads, the songs I write, at their core, are quite ordinary human concerns, but the process of writing about them transforms them into something else.
My music has to do with beauty, and it's intended to, if not lift the spirits, then be a kind of a balm to the spirits.
I know when I sit with my band members and we're playing back a song that we've done, I know that they're experiencing it in a completely different way and hearing stuff that they're alerted to because the way the interpret the world is through their ears. Mine is through my eyes.
With writing a song, I've always felt, right from the start, like I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel. I don't ever feel there's a font of ideas to fall back on.
Writing is a necessary thing for me, just to keep myself level. It has beneficial effects on my life.
Film seems to be a medium designed for betrayal and violence.
I'm a big fan of teatowels and am always on the lookout for a good one.
The rock star is dying. And it's a small tragedy. Rock stars have blogs now. I have no use for that kind of rock star.
People think I'm a miserable sod but it's only because I get asked such bloody miserable questions.
Most of the time, feelings just seem to get in the way. They're a luxury for the idle, a bourgeois concept. Feelings are overrated.
I just want to leave this world with a massive catalog of songs.
I always thought my records were number one; it's just the charts didn't think so.
Writing screenplays makes me a better musician because it clears my head. After writing a movie, I go running back to music as fast as I can.
People are always surprised to see clues to my being a normal kind of guy. As if I'm somehow letting the team down.
Guns are part of the American psyche, aren't they? This is collateral damage for having a Wild West mentality. It's intrinsic to the American psyche. It's never going to change.
I love being manipulated by what I see. I love weepies and romantic comedies where you're reaching for the Kleenex at the right moment.
