When I go into rehearsal rooms and meet with bands, they're genuinely excited to be with me because of what I've done as an artist, not because of anything else. There's that whole celebrity rock star thing, and artists are into artists who have been able to achieve success their way.
I'm very fast on teaching guys. Like, when I came over here, I only had two rehearsals with the band. I wondered when I first got here... but it sure came up great.
I had this extraordinarily bizarre moment when, two Fridays ago, my missus gave birth to our second child at 11am and by the same time the following day I was sitting around a table with Ridley Scott, Russell Crowe and Leonardo DiCaprio in Rabat in Morocco, rehearsing a scene we were going to shoot the next day.
And then we came here for three weeks of band rehearsal with [music consultant/member of the band "Sloan"] Chris Murphy. And I grew up in Toronto during Sloan's heyday, so like I was like "Oh my god!" And so that was pretty cool.
Before I ever did a stage concert, I'd done hundreds of living-room concerts, which helped a lot.
Good diet and exercise are key, but abject fear has its own rewards. And arriving on the first day for rehearsals for 'Spamalot' and seeing all these much younger, much fitter people, who I was going to be on stage with, became a catalyst for cutting out the more unhealthy aspects of my life.
I love, love, love to rehearse, but when you're rehearsing and then you go do it at night, it's a very weird thing.
When she started crying in my rehearsal, I felt so badly because I was like, 'I'm making Kelly Clarkson cry right now,' but it also felt really good because I thought, 'If she is feeling this, hopefully, America will feel this, too.'
