Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

Q: When "Damn the Torpedoes" hit, it catapulted you to another level of exposure. Did you want the fame?

A: Sure. I think everybody who does this wants the fame no matter what they say. I would have been very disappointed if I wasn't famous after all that work.

Q: With your next album, "Hard Promises," MCA decided to raise the price to $9.98, up $1 from the standard price. You refused to release it at the higher price, leading to a very public battle with the label. Why did you take that stand?

A: I did it because it was going to be the first $9.98 record, and I was going to be the guy through the door who raised the whole thing, and I thought, "You're not doing it to me, do it to Olivia Newton-John or somebody . . . but you're not going to do it to me." [laughs] And then it became a bigger crusade than that, and the press got interested in it and so, you know, we saw it through and got our way eventually.

The music has to be affordable. It's the common man that keeps it going, and if you price it out of his realm, it becomes a thing of the elite.

Q: Did you worry about losing your career?

A: I didn't worry about my career ending, but there were days where I felt pretty beat up by it all and just pretty tired, because they didn't make it easy for me. And coming right off the last lawsuit, it was the last thing I wanted to get involved in. When it was over, we didn't really celebrate, we were just exhausted. I lost all interest in the record business and never wanted to do anything except hand in a record again. To this day, I don't have any interest in it.

Q: "Long After Dark," which came out in 1982, coincided with the birth of MTV. How did the video channel change things for you?

A: In those days MTV was so hungry for product, you could have three or four videos an album. Suddenly, we had a lot of stuff on TV, and then your recognition factor goes up on the street. Instead of being on once a year, you're on all day long. People are seeing you all the time, so we tried to use it to our advantage, and it was so much fun.

By the time we'd done "Mary Jane's Last Dance," I remember thinking, "Can we line up stiffs in the video? Can we open on a line of corpses? Yeah! Sure we can."

Q: That segues perfectly into 1985's "Southern Accents." It is impossible to think of "Don't Come Around Here No More" without thinking of the video and "Alice in Wonderland." What was the band's response to the song?

A: Mike didn't like it, I think. The label hated it, [it] was like, "What the hell is this?" [laughs] It was one of the only times that I went, "OK, we're going to make a single." So it was a real satisfying thing to see it work. The video played a huge part in making it work, and it is a damn good video.

Q: What was the reaction to your cutting up Alice like a cake?

A: [MTV] actually made me edit out a scene of my face when we were cutting her up. They said it was just too lascivious. It was just a shot of me grinning, and they were like, "Well, you can do it, but you can't enjoy it that much."

Q: There may be some kids in Idaho who as a result of seeing that shot . . .

A: May see people as cakes.

Q: In the song "Southern Accents," you sing about your mom, who died in 1981. You did not go to her funeral because you thought it would cause too much commotion in Gainesville. That seems like a horrible price to pay for fame.

A: We knew it would cause a horrible commotion. My brother actually suggested that it probably wouldn't be a good idea, because even to this day, you know, my family, I go there, and they just get cuckoo. What we didn't want was for it to turn into an autograph fest and the Instamatics come out when it wasn't about that. I don't like funerals anyway. I don't think I missed anything by not going. I made my own peace with my mother.

Q: It is staggering how many people you have lost, from your mom and dad to people you have worked with like Roy Orbison, Del Shannon, Michael Kamen, George Harrison and Howie Epstein. Do you think that affects your writing?

A: Well, it could. I think it probably affects the way you live, you know. It makes you realize you really don't want to miss a day. George devastated me. I didn't think George could die. It so ripped my heart out that I still can't think about it. I remember when Roy Orbison died, I thought at the time if anybody had been prepared to go, it was him, because he was in such a good place mentally and spiritually. But then you see people who aren't ready to go. Howie, he wasn't ready to go. That makes you just say a) I'm lucky to be here, and b) I better appreciate being here.

The biggest one, the one that bothers me the most, is my mother. She could have had everything that she'd ever dreamt of and she didn't get to do it, and that one seems the worst to me because you just didn't get the payoff, you know.

Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7