I think after 1970 or so, after I sold Soul City, I took off for awhile and didn't do too many gigs.
After Wings I did a lot of recording rather than live work. I even went into a kind of semi-retirement to places like Spain at one point.
I think one of the reasons I haven't been doing music is because I think that some of my performance, like, needs are being taken care of in other mediums.
When I rejoined AC/DC in 1994 I hadn't played for about eight years.
It's been over 15 years since I toured... over 12 years since I did any recording under my own name. I never really intended to take that long of a hiatus.
After 'Return Of The Bumpasaurus' in '96, I just got away from music for, like, a year. Literally, I think I produced two songs in a year. I was totally kicking it, running around.
It's a cruel, heartless world out there in commercial rock 'n' roll, and when you take as much time off as we did, eight years, booking agents don't know if you'll draw.
All of our other albums were consecutive year after year: 'No More Mr. Nice Guy,' 'Step in the Arena,' 'Daily Operation,' 'Hard to Earn.' After 'Hard to Earn,' a four-year gap is a lot of not having Gang Starr music, as far as an album is concerned.
In the three years that nobody heard music from me, I made more music than I've ever made.
I spent a couple of years not doing any music or anything, just here in Hawaii trying to get healthy and adjust to the new regimen I was setting up for myself.
But I was in the Radiohead studio today and Phil was there drumming and Thom was there playing. We feel like we've only just stopped and already people are wanting us to carry on.
Most bands don't make it past two albums and tours, if that. We pulled it off, and everybody's been happy and cool, but we got to the point where we knew it was time to take a break.
There was, like, a point where music was slow for me, like '09. I wasn't getting that much work.
After the 'Last Waltz' concert, it just seemed very healthy to me to put making a record as far out of my mind as I possibly could.
After Sleater-Kinney broke up in 2006 I had very little desire to play music. It took well over three years before picking up a guitar meant anything to me other than an exercise.
