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I've made this decision not to talk to the press about anything that's gone on in my life, but just to write music about it. They can interpret it themselves.

The problem was the journalists who also did not understand much of my music, but they wrote about it. I think you fell into the usual trap laid out by parts of the press and other writers: that the poor musician has always to fight the evil companies and managers.

If I did all the stuff I've been accused of - or credited with - there's no way I could make all this music. I'd be drinking myself into the grave.

I really went back through a lot of the dark corridors of my life in this. I wanted people to know who I am based on my music, not on what they read in the tabloids.

If everyone in the music business were brutally honest about what their intentions were then you could sort things out, but it's all smoke and mirrors.

I would be a huge hypocrite if I didn't tell you that at one time in my life I thought the way that you made music was you got on a major label and you got famous.

I think it takes a lot of trickery to keep up with the media and its perception of you. I don't know if I have it in me most of the time to care. The music is made first, and the interviews or photos to keep it alive come later as a necessary evil, I suppose.

Normally, I don't like explaining songs. I don't want to kill anyone's interpretation or the story they want to make for themselves.

I'm really fed up with all the credibility talk. A lot of times it seems to be more important than the music. Well, I guess for a lot of people it actually is. We don't care for credibility.

I'm the perfect amount of guarded. I don't reveal too much, and I never reveal who the songs are about. They are real life. People get that. I date a lot of musicians and they do the same thing. People that work with me - who I write about too - they get it. It's my creative outlet, my therapy.