It's a very selfish time. When I'm here at home, my responsibilities are far greater. I'm forced to be way more selfless. My priorities are so far down the list that it's hard to see them. And yet, when I'm on tour, I basically have to get the show right, every night, but the days are really constructed around selfish activities for self-improvement, or not. That's where I feel guilty because I know that life is going on full-speed when I'm not around.
Most people who are on the road are pretty damaged. It's an escapist's life. It's not a life that forces you to look in the mirror at where you're at and what you're doing. It's one where you leave the mirror behind. I think that appeals to something in all of us. On the open road, all of your regrets are out the window.
Who doesn't love Game of Thrones? Sons of Anarchy is funny and thug-ish. I love Shameless. I just sit with my hat tipped, waiting for something to happen, more than going out after the shows.
By just passing through things, I continue to slightly limit myself. I want the jobs that don't say that much. I'm often the stepping stone or the conduit from one thing to another. I love the idea of existing in a film and growing and having bigger arcs, and being in scenes where you're just being, as opposed to talking. That' one of my ambitions, lying ahead.
It's like a relay race of being ignored. It is really challenging, but whenever I get asked that stuff, I feel really self-conscious about it. I feel really lucky because we have a lot of help. When I first began to be a dad with Gwen [Stefani], I was amazed at what she went through.
It goes without saying that what a girl goes through, boys could not even comprehend. If we get the flu, we need a week. We're idiots. But what was the most powerful realization to me was, how do single mothers with a low income cope? I can't complain about my dumb life. That's what was most revelatory to me.
Somehow, something is always suffering. Someone is always losing out somehow. If you pick one kid up, you're not picking the other one up. You just try to minimize those small let-downs because, in a way, life is a series of let-downs from everyone, all the time. We don't mean it, but it happens. So, I just try to minimize that and spread them wide.
I've always thought that you just make everything as best as you can, and then, one day, people will look objectively at what you do, from a distance, and see its quality. All you try to do is keep the standard up so that, one day, when I sit back and I look at it all, I can feel really good about it.
Every time I try to disown that concept for myself, which is a really healthy perspective, they bring it back all the time. It's so serious and so real and so tangible that you don't want to taint it with anything other than the thing itself. I was tickled pink with my very zen self, walking around saying that I made a record because I wanted to make a record. That's so beautiful. It's like a haiku poem. That takes away all the tension and the expectation. I just want to try to do something interesting.
I was in rock music in London when it was the height of Brit pop, with The Kinks revival and Suede and Blur and Oasis, and all of those really great bands that were of a certain style. If I'd really been smart and commercially minded, I would have just got myself a blazer and some Stay Press and some Fred Perry tops, and just gone out and tried to do it like everyone else. Instead, I did this ridiculous thing of trying to do this music.
The day before I left to fly in New York, I went in the ocean and was just lying on my black looking up at the sky, which was that Hawaii blue. Just that moment was worth the entire thing. The ocean is everything. It can heal you.
When I was lucky enough to be successful, I distanced myself completely from the whole thing of units and selling copies. I just wanted to keep everyone who comes to see me happy. I spend so much time after my shows talking to people who come from all over the world to see me. I'll go out and sign a picture and have a chat.
Those times when I play on stage in front of lots of people, it's such an unusual and borderline unhealthy process, even though I love it and I really do it with humility. I don't have serfs getting me grapes after, or things like that.
But it is really, really fun to just change it up some and to absolutely be a very small spoke on a big wheel, and to just be a part of that and contribute to something that people can enjoy.
Well, I'm English, so it's intimidating to step anywhere. I used to be painfully shy. I wouldn't say that I'm painfully shy anymore. But if I have the option of sitting on the edge of a circle, I will.
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