Every year that I go out on tour, I think about all the craziest ideas that would be great to go out with, and I think, 'I should see if Jeff Beck wants to join my band for a month or something.'
I've been a list maker for years, even before I was a musician. I was always writing things down and kept long lists of things that would make good album titles and things like that. I'm constantly thinking in terms of songwriting.
I get like a melody that comes up and I try to write it down or record it. Hum it into a tape recorder or write it down on some manuscript paper. It could happen at any time, on the road or off the road, but mostly, you know, at home.
There was absolutely no intention of splitting up. We had so many great ideas to use on the new album. John Paul Jones was incredible, coming to the studio each day with new instruments to play.
When I was doing 'Formula Volume 1,' I had so many ideas that I knew one album was not going to be enough.
I sit around and play acoustic guitar - usually acoustic, sometimes electric, occasionally piano, but more often guitar, just trying to come up with tunes. Ideas kind of pop into your head.
I'm always writing something. I've got so much stuff, I don't know what to do with it. Some of it will be Strokes, some of it will be I don't know what - stuff for pop singers. TV themes. I've got a jar stuffed with songs, all these ideas that are just me humming into a recording device.
A guitar for me is pretty much strictly in the context of writing songs for my band, coming up with ideas with my band, and then being able to perform those songs as best as I can on stage - that's what the guitar for me has always been.
I hear melodies and hooks all day. I've always been that way, since I was a kid.
I'm not really a knob-twiddler. I always work with an engineer; I'm not super hands-on when it comes to mixing boards and computers. I'm much more about what I'm hearing and what it needs to be like. I deal with songs and ideas and instruments.
I like to come up with the melodies, and I have a lot of ideas as far as structure goes.
I love making music. I love being involved in arranging music. It's very natural to know what I want to hear next and come up with ideas that are variations of what might be good.
I'm trying to get music ideas that come and keep them alive. It's like carrying water in your hands. I want to keep it all, and sometimes by the time you get to the studio you have nothing.
You can imagine several scenes from Star Wars? The way they looked? For me, that's how music is. Sometimes I'll be developing riffs for songs, just while I'm sitting around and not playing.
I find that the rhythm of going on long walks will suggest melodies.
I like the Sci Fi channel and 'Science Fiction Theatre.' I've been doing a lot of television-watching and thinking about good songs to write.
There are so many songs in my heart and in my brain. I wake up at 2 in the morning, and I have to get up and sing them. There are so many of them, it's ridiculous.
It's the things that you notice when you're not actually with your instrument that, in fact, become so interesting, and that you - you want to explore, through this tiny tiny surface of a drum.
