I think I had actually served my apprenticeship as a writer of fiction by writing all those songs. I had already been through phases of autobiographical or experimental stuff.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Had I not become entangled with music, I would have become an author much earlier.
A lot of my early career, I wrote story songs that had narratives, that had plots.
Although my other ambition was to be a musical theater star (and I would attend college on a voice scholarship), writing was never far from my mind.
I wrote music. I was in a hardcore band when I was 14, and I wasn't good enough to play anyone else's songs, so I had to write my own.
Playing in my early bands, working as a studio musician, producing and going to art school was, in retrospect, my apprenticeship. I was learning and creating a solid foundation of ideas, but I wasn't really playing music.
It's always a mixture of fiction and your own story. It's more I recreate atmospheres and moods through songs.
All through my writing life, I've had this impulse to write autobiographical works.
When I first started to get into writing, it was via music. I'd generate ideas for songs that would turn into stories, then they'd turn into novels. I was biased toward music.
I had a vision of myself as a novelist because that was where I could be serious. I couldn't with music.
I've always written songs, even when I wasn't doing anything with my personal life in music.