It's hard to get to the point where you feel motivated and energized to go back in and create new music when you feel like you've just drained yourself by pouring everything you have into the previous project. It would be nice sometimes to take a longer break in between projects.
You know, people would always ask me, 'How long is Primus going to go on?' And I would say, 'Until it isn't fun anymore.' At the end of the '90s, it just wasn't fun anymore on many levels.
The problem as you get older is, from my perspective, after a certain amount of songs, you tend to start writing something and then you stop and say, 'Wait, I think I've written that before.'
Boredom or being sick of what you've done before is a big part of being in a band.
The end of the Nineties was an unhappy Primus camp. I hit a creative stagnation that wasn't helping us forward, and the personal elements, it just was time to stop.
As far as the Animals breaking up - it was my fault. I wanted out. We took it to the max, as far as we could take it. Our reunion tour in 1983 went pretty good until we left America. Then we pushed it too hard and it fell apart.
I think it's rather a waste of time endlessly singing the same songs every night for a year, and it's just not what I want to do.
I'm getting bored performing the same songs over and over. Songwriting comes and goes.
I was heavily into Nirvana and I still am, but when I was 23 I got disillusioned by music. Then I just focused more on myself and gave up music for a while.
I think a lot of bands are creatively knackered when they come off tour.
When you're listening to radio and hear the same 20 songs over and over and over, you want a break from it. Sometimes you don't want to hear something that sounds just like everything else on the radio. Eventually, if you hear the same sounds and the same musicians and the same mixes and all of that, it will start to sound like elevator music.
I don't want to scream 'Immigrant Song' every night for the rest of my life, and I'm not sure I could.
You have to be careful not to make music something you don't want to do. Which happens. I've gotten off the road and been like, 'I hate it. I hate singing, I hate playing guitar.' Six days later, I'm in my bedroom singing at the top of my lungs because I love it so much.
Once I picked up an electric guitar, I lost interest in piano, and I just wanted to rock. I studied piano for so long, I got burned out on it.
By the time The Band did The Last Waltz, the chemistry had changed, and it wasn't a thrill anymore to live that studio kind of life.
You have to remember the band played from 1960 to 1965, every night. You get into a rut playing nightclubs every night, and you didn't want to run it into the ground.
Don't make the mistakes I made of not taking care of myself. Please, keeps your chops cool and don't overblow. If you are going to play hard, be sure to warm up. I'd get carried away trying to stay right with the momentum [of Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers]. I used to try and play like Coltrane and solo for 30 or 40 choruses. It all caught up with me.
Sometimes a sound gets overused. There is such a thing as a good saxophone, but it's like those fields in agriculture - they need to rest for a year or so. You need time to burn all the saxophones and start from scratch.
I guess all bands get to that point where they run out of inspiration and just get bored with the chemistry.
Some bands I'm obsessed with but I get sick of listening to their music after a while, but that hasn't happened with Twin Peaks.
I don't like my music. I'll make a song, and if I do like it, I'll feel it, but after that 10th play, I don't like it no more.
It became apparent to me near the end of the album cycle for 'House Of Gold & Bones' that it had basically run its course. But the band kept pushing for more dates, and I was just, like, 'It's time to stop!'
I also just accept that I might never want to write a song again.
If I have to try and write one more country single, I'll lose my mind.
I got really sick of playing just, like, 'Bop-bop-bop-bada-bop-bop-bada-rapa-pah.' Just playing that 190-beats-per-minute punk-rock songs, I didn't feel it anymore. And I always loved melody - when you looked back on those early records, there's always a hook buried in there somewhere.
