I've done a bit of smuggling, I've run my share of grass. I made enough money to buy Miami, but I piss it away so fast.

I knew Fred since I was 14 and was first going to the Old Town School, Fred used to work part-time in the store. Every time I wrote a song Fred would turn on his really good high-class tape recorder, reel-to-reel, and record it. So he's got recordings of me on guitar singing all my songs in his apartment long before I ever recorded for a recording company. I never found out what happened to the tapes.

Everything in life is not all beautiful, not all fun. There is lots of killing and drugs. To me, a perfect album talks about the hard stuff and the fun and caring stuff.

At art school, a teacher said: 'The best paintings are when you get lost in a piece of work and start painting in a stream of consciousness.' I wanted to do music, not art, so started writing lyrics that way. The first song I wrote was called 'Ice Cream and Wafers.' The next was 'Holding Back the Years.'

I don't just sing for free. It's my work. You're paid for what you do. And I work hard.

It's kinda hard to be optimistic, When your homies lying dead on the pavement twisted.