Back in the days, we had to work with a shoestring budget. We had a movie screen, and we'd show movie trailers on them, and then we'd rip through it and started playing. Now we have a little money to play with to do a cool stage set.

It started getting too crazy with 'Earth A.D.' The concepts started becoming too brutal and violent. It was less about fiction and more about the real world, the past, present, and future. I think a lot of people got freaked out by that.

My idea of covers is that you should never cover a song and do it exactly like the artist because everyone's always going to compare it to the way the original artists did it, and they're just going to go, 'Oh I like the original better.'

I like albums. I like holding them, seeing what they're all about, you know? I like reading liner notes. Even if it's a CD, you're getting kind of an idea of what the band is coming from. Or what they want you to think they're coming from. I like that.

Well, I've been on stage my whole life. Also, when you're doing music videos, a lot of people don't understand. They think you just go up there, do the song, and they film the video. You do it like a jillion times before that though. Same thing in the studio.

It's annoying when someone's in front of you driving ten miles an hour, and you're like, 'Okay, today,' and someone else is on the side of you, so you can't pass them, and when you finally do pass them and they are texting, the laser cannons just come out and disintegrate that car.

My opinion of covers is that unless you're going to change and take a cover in a new direction, it's gonna get put up against the old one, and you're gonna lose. It's like, which would you rather listen to? The Righteous Brothers' 'Loving Feeling' or Hall and Oates' 'Loving Feeling?'

I always want to do - take everything and take it to the next step. I don't want to just keep doing something the same ol' thing. Obviously, I could have wrote 'Mother' 20 times and made tons of money and be playing gigantic arenas and whatever, but that's not really what I want to do.

Comics are a dying art. If you ask a little kid to choose between a video game with insane graphics or comic books... you have to compete with cable, satellite TV with its thousands of channels, and with video games that are like movies, with CGI explosions where you can blow up worlds.

However you feel about Dimebag, this is one of the most influential metal guitar players of the '90s. I was just talking to someone that I am hiring to bring on the tour who said that, when he was at the funeral, that Eddie Van Halen came and put his striped guitar in the coffin. That's a pretty big deal.

I like being out onstage in front of everybody, getting that energy and giving that energy. Hopefully I am making them forget about all their problems in the world. For however many hours they are at our show, hopefully they are going to have a great time, and it makes life a little more bearable for everybody involved.

Al Gore wanted to tell people what they could listen to and what they couldn't, what they could record. It was basically coming down to the idea that he wouldn't let anybody record any music that he didn't think you should be doing. There was going to be an organization that would tell you what you could and couldn't record.

Share This Page