Guitar Tricks Insider October/November Issue | Page 50

LISTEN HEAR So you will actually look at the clock and it’s work. You punch the time clock so to speak. I will say I will now produce. Then you really have to get into some serious therapy because I’m not really the one either to want to make music, just for the sake of making music. I really have to have something to say. Since my last record I need to have learned something, either about music, about myself, about the world, in order to feel justified in saying anything. There is too much music, there is too much on the airwaves. There are too many frequencies already filled up. Why should I add to it? I hope I am honest enough to be able to say well if I’ve nothing left to say that is coherent or useful, then I should say nothing. But I have to trust myself, that if I put myself through it, there will be something there. Was it always this hard to write music? No, I think when you are younger you are more confident. I think only certainty is really a terror of the ignorant. When you are young you are ignorant about it. I was talking to James Taylor about songwriting the other day. I said it’s funny that you and I and our contemporaries write music very simply. We are not intimidated. We weren’t when we were young. Classical musicians on the other hand, from the age of four, are dominated by these huge figures of Mozart, Bach, and Hayden. And to even conceive of writing a piece of music with those people over you, is inconceivable. So most classical musicians don’t write music. But we who listen to Fats Domino, we can work those chords out. Yeah I can write a song. We started that way and I’m glad we started that way. So it’s strange. ■ “Driven to Tears” by Pearl Jam with Sting 50 GUITAR TRICKS INSIDER DIGITAL EDITION OCT/NOV