My solo shows require a sit-down, indoor space.

One of the things I loved - or I love still - about this Occupy movement is it's got a very gentle core. I mean, it's really decidedly nonviolent in the face of all kinds of situations.

I felt like the last thing we did, 'The Eternal,' and the touring we did behind it was some of the strongest stuff we'd ever done, and the band was very much a vital entity.

I ride a bicycle. I make artwork and do other kinds of stuff - but in terms of unwind, I like to play tennis and ride.

I'm very interested in the distance and the space between those two poles: very concrete, song-based stuff on the one hand and very improvisational, abstract stuff on the other. I don't see any reason music should exclude one or the other, and I think the pairing of them together makes for very interesting music in a lot of ways.

I came late to Sandy Denny and Fairport Convention. I don't know why, but that's the beauty of music - songs and voices are there when you need them, when you're ready to find them, whether in their time or after.

After Hurricane Sandy, my family and I stayed in our apartment in lower Manhattan before things normalized. We're lucky enough to live on a bit of high ground, so we weren't flooded... but it was intense. Since there was no light, water, or electricity, I spent a lot of time playing acoustic guitar in the evenings.

Change is always good. It brings you to a new place.

We're a rock band. We're proud of it. We're not an art band, a noise band, or an extreme band.

I've never been a huge Zeppelin fan, much to the chagrin of everybody else in my former band. But certainly those Pink Floyd records, I was really into them, especially 'Dark Side of the Moon.'

Obviously, Sonic Youth has been a huge part of my life for many, many years, and I love all those guys dearly.

I'm married to a Canadianm so I have a lot of fond thoughts about Canada. I think about the prairies of Manitoba, where my wife is from, and I have a lot of friends and relatives on both coasts and have spent a lot time in Canada from Nova Scotia to B.C. In some ways, it's a much more sane country than the U.S.

When you listen to early Leonard Cohen records or Joni Mitchell records, you feel like a window is being opened into someone's life.

Usually my records are made trying to capture the essence of a band playing in a room.

We're not playing your typical guitar tuning, so there is no normal chords for us to get our footing with. We're pretty much making it up as we go as far as the sounds we're creating. Oftentimes, the song will be inspired by just a certain kind of block of sound that somebody creates.

Songs seem to always spring from improvisation.

Sonic Youth played one show before we even had a drummer. It was just me, Kim, and Thurston. The lights slowly went down, and the set was just 30 minutes of feedback.

I don't mourn the old, romantic, dirty Times Square, although it was more unique.

I guess, from the beginning, Thurston and Kim were the dominant singers in the band, and although I was singing in bands previously, I guess I mainly deferred to them a lot in terms of who was singing the bulk of the songs.

When we first started, in the early Eighties, we had some crappy guitars - Japanese knockoffs that wouldn't hold standard tuning. Later, we'd shove drumsticks or screwdrivers under strings to scheme new noises, sure. But initially, open tuning was a technique used to make our cheap guitars sound better. It wasn't academic or conceptual.

I recognise that the whole issue of downloading and intellectual property rights is not an easy one, but on the whole, I'm a fan of downloading, both legal and illegal, and the open-source ethos that it harbours for the future is a good one.

When I was in grade school and high school, I did a lot of chorale singing. And the chorus would be tenor, bass, and alto and soprano.

I'm so used to knowing what to do with an electric guitar and amplifier, but with an acoustic guitar, it's different, but I still have an amp and a whole bunch of pedals.

When Sonic Youth wrote music, we would rehearse for months before anybody heard anything.