Aesthetically, we were enormously successful. Economically... there was no success. It was all about music of the future and unfortunately it was a band that didn't have any future.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
We didn't go for music that sounded like blues, or jazz, or rock, or Led Zeppelin, or Rolling Stones. We didn't want to be like any of the other bands.
I don't think success has changed us as people at all. We are the same lunatics that we were when this band first got going. We never see ourselves as being on a higher level than our fans.
The music we made then was so amateurish, compared to the rest of mainstream pop or rock and roll. But what differentiated us from what everybody else was doing in the business was the fact that you could tell that these people came from different reference areas.
The only thing that was economic, I might say, about my music career, aside from the fact that I did everybody's tax returns in the band, was the decision I made to leave the music business on economic grounds.
Something happened in the nineties. There was a shift. I don't want to blame it on grunge or the rise of indie - but that was basically it. It was seen as dirty and kind of ignorant to have these ambitions, to want to be a big band.
We were really interested in music from all over the world. We realized that what we were doing was very close to contemporary classical music because of the lack of tonality in the guitar- the fact that I play guitar the way I play.
We were perceived as a post-grunge band.
Fact is we went on to do other things. But we still wanted to do our success like rock'n'roll stars.
I think we could have done a lot more great music, so I was disappointed that we didn't continue making records and touring, but it's hard to argue with 10 good years.
I think between The Beach Boys, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and innumerable acts after that... rock music became a huge economic force.