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Q: "Full Moon Fever" finally came out in 1989. Among the hits was "I Won't Back Down." If people did not already see you as a crusader, they sure did after a line like "You can stand me up at the gates of hell/But I won't back down."

A: Embarrassing.

Q: Really?

A: It was a little embarrassing. I thought, "Should I put this out?" It's so damn literal, there's nowhere to hide in this song. Jeff and Mike liked it. It was George Harrison that put it over the top. He played guitar and sang on it, and he took me aside and said, "This is really good, I really like this song." And then I thought, "Well, if all of them like it, then I'm going to put it out."

God, I could just be here all day talking about what it's done, the stories people tell me, how it's been applied to so many lives. That makes you realize that maybe sometimes it's right to say it and not to worry too much about metaphor.

Q: You keep your record and ticket prices down. You do not accept corporate sponsorship or let your songs be in commercials. Does it seem odd that some people consider you heroic when you are just doing what you think is right?

A: It's not heroic. Like you said, I'm just doing what seems right. I've never consciously done it. I'm certainly not a Robin Hood, I'm not that way. I just do what seems like the logical thing to do.

Like with the tickets, you know, it's been brought to our attention again and again and again: "You could be making twice the money you're making." We turn it down, I don't think with an eye toward being Robin Hood, I just think with an eye of, I want this trip to go on. I don't want to come through, burn everybody for $200 a ticket and then they can't afford to come see me again. Plus, I just don't think it's right. I don't think we need that much money.

Q: Why don't you let your songs be used in commercials?

A: Because I didn't write them to be orange juice commercials. Sometimes I feel like maybe it's a dumb move because I don't know if anyone cares, but I care immensely. I don't like it. I think it made [rock music] common and irrelevant. I think I'd get hives if I turned [the TV] on and saw my music playing behind the Gap. That would probably put me over the top.

Q: Your buddy Bob Dylan is doing it.

A: That's his business, you know. I have a lot of friends who do it. They're comfortable with it. That's fine if they see it that way. But I don't see it that way, so I just can't do it.

Q: And no tour sponsorships either. Same principle?

A: It's our band, you know. We started it from nothing and we own it, and I want people to trust it. It's not for sale.

Q: Can the band veto you?

A: Not really. I'm sure they know that if there's enough votes against me it will have a lot of power into what I decide, but I don't think they can veto me. I don't think we've ever gotten to a "them-against-me" point. It's a democracy, but you gotta do it my way. [laughs]

Q: You and the Heartbreakers came back together for "Into the Great Wide Open." The optimism continued from the solo and Wilbury work. It seemed like you had gone from being really angry to...

A: More observant, maybe. "Into the Great Wide Open" was the end of the '80s and into the '90s, and I was trying to deal, in a loose way, with some of that. The Gulf War had started. I think that played some small [part] in the record. In "Learning to Fly," stuff like "the sea may burn," I'm sure that came from the oil fires. I wanted that song to be a kind of redemptive song, only in the vaguest way, certainly not literally.

Q: Your last album for MCA was a greatest-hits package that included "Mary Jane's Last Dance." That was another classic video for you. What made you decide that Kim Basinger was a good choice for a corpse?

A: I said, "She's got to look really good, or why would he keep her around after she's dead?" I thought, "Kim Basinger would be good, I'd probably keep her a day or two, let's go see if she would do it." You can make a joke about it, but you do have to act a bit to be dead. It's not easy.

Q: In 1994, your second solo album, "Wildflowers," came out. There are some rock songs on there, but it is primarily dominated by gorgeous acoustic melodies.

A: That's my best one, I think, because I think it shows the whole scope of what I can do. "Wildflowers" covered really everything that had come into my brain and came out again. We drove the engineers so hard on that record, one or two snapped like twigs, and then there were some that couldn't make it. And I remember telling them at some really late hour, "Stick with me, kid, and I'll see you at the Grammys," and they did. Both [engineers] won a Grammy, and I was so proud of them.

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