I started listening to and playing other music in the '90s. It was after hearing other bands, like Bad Religion, cover Ramones songs that I started to like our songs again.
The main issue was deciding what to play: Should it be old Ramones material or new material? I had about three albums worth of new material, but I knew that people would rather hear the Ramones songs.
It's funny, when I'm not on the road or doing stuff with Bad Company - or whatever- I've always written songs galore... a lot of stuff people don't even hear.
We just sang real simple songs in a simple way that got to people. We didn't try to tart them up with orchestral arrangements and all the stuff. We were all blues fanatics. We like R+B and blues and simple, gut-feeling music.
That's what I find with any good song, you just have to let it happen. Out of about twenty songs you might write, one of any significance. It might be thirty or forty, but I just keep churning them out and churning them out in hope that one of them will stick.
Every year we celebrate the holy season of Advent, O God. Every year we pray those beautiful prayers of longing and waiting, and sing those lovely songs of hope and promise.
When I finished a song that I thought was good, I thought, I don't know where that came from, so I have no idea if I can do that again. I'm talking like, a hundred and fifty songs down the line. I still feel that.
It was more that his career was going down again and he was tired of the songs. He was tired of the routine. And there was a point where he just kind of gave up. He couldn't face being 40. And he resorted to stimulants. There's a dark side there, a really dark side.
