From the Garage to Abbey Road: Russell Marsden Reflects on 15 Years of Band of Skulls with New Boxset | The Sharp Notes Interview

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In an era when the term "rock band" can feel like a nostalgic nod to a fading archetype, Band of Skulls has always stood as the real deal: gritty, authentic, and unrelentingly driven. With their forthcoming retrospective box set Cold Fame, frontman Russell Marsden digs deep into the band’s archives to illuminate the long, winding, and often unpredictable road that led to their breakout debut Baby Darling Doll Face Honey. In our conversation, Marsden reflects not only on the music but on the memories, the missteps, and the near-mystical moments that have defined their journey.

More than just a collection of rarities and reissues, Cold Fame offers fans a window into the band’s early incarnation and the evolution that followed. Marsden shares stories of impromptu opportunities, DIY demos made with chopsticks and saucepans, and surreal full-circle moments like recording in the very studio that inspired one of their biggest songs. His insights reveal the band's determination, resourcefulness, and refusal to chase trends.

What emerges from this retrospective is not only a celebration of Band of Skulls' past but a powerful testament to persistence, reinvention, and the timeless appeal of rock and roll. Marsden, now the sole original member forging ahead with a new band, discusses how returning to his sonic roots has shaped his upcoming music. If the past is any indication, what comes next won’t just revisit familiar territory, it’ll reassert Band of Skulls’ place in the lineage of great British rock.

rm: Look at your vinyl, wow.

ezt: I've got some records back here.

rm: Impressive.

ezt: Well, you've got a little stack there.

rm: Oh, yes, can you see those?

ezt: Yes.

rm: That's an album I've not made yet. That's my records too junky for the living room, but too interesting to throw out.

ezt: Yes, I know exactly what that pile means.

rm: They're there. I one day will put them all into-- I'll make them into one.

ezt: Yes, look at that gold record. What's that? What is that?

rm: You're embarrassing me now. I didn't realize I had such a wide screen. Can you see my swimming pool? [laughs]

ezt: Look at that pool! (kidding)

rm: That's Baby Darling Doll Face Honey. There it is. That's the gold record. That's the gold disc.

ezt: Wow, that's cool.

rm: It says you worked so hard that your fingers to the bone, and it might as well be, "Thank you for ruining yourself." [chuckles]

ezt: Well, Russell, thanks so much for joining me today. It's very exciting you've got a box set of the band coming out. It's called Cold Fame, and much of it is pulled from your personal archive. I just would like to ask, what was it like to revisit those early recordings, the photos, the memories? What was that like going through all that stuff and putting together this box set that's coming out in June, late June, right?

rm: June 27. I've got it here. June the 27th or June 27th. It was amazing, actually. I think it's quite daunting for anyone to look back on their career and look back on their life. Perhaps when you're doing something with music or I don't know but you're asked to-- I think I was talking to some of my friends was like, "Can you imagine bringing out your high school pictures and going through not just the high school pictures but your workbooks, your workings in the margin?" This is what this was.

It was like I was looking at the notes to how we made it, and I had forgotten a few things. When it shown light on how we did it and how I did the bits that I did on the record, I figured that was the stuff that I should check. What bit surprised me? There was plenty of that. It was just boxes and boxes of stuff out of my attic. I've turned the roof of my house into a book. That's what's happened. [chuckles]

ezt: That's interesting. I like that thought about the pictures from high school. Just personally, where I had my prom, they just blew up the hotel.

It was this big hotel here in New Jersey, so it had a big implosion. They blew it up last weekend. A part of me did feel like, oh, some of that is leaving, and that It reminded me of some of those old pictures. You remember who you were back then and, of course, compared with who you are now.

rm: Yes, exactly that. I sympathize with you right there. When you go back to where you grew up and they've put a road through, you're like: that's where something formative happened. I think we burst onto the scene rather, with this album, but there was a whole story of how that album was made, and we're a band, and there's a whole story about how that band was made.

Although the box set does picture these first three albums, so you've got Baby Darling Doll Face Honey, Sweet Sour - The Difficult Second Album - and you've got The Himalayan, where I feel like the band really defined itself. For the first time, this was a great chance for me. I wanted to tell the story of how the band got to that best album because it's similar for lots of artists, and musicians, and bands, and writers. We were the same. We were an overnight success that took a decade. It took 10 years to break through.

I've never really shared or spoken about too much what happened before because it's when you're failing. It's not a successful time. I wanted to showcase that, talk about it, and celebrate it. The secret chapter in the box set that no one's asked for or expecting, I think I want to call it The Road to Baby Darling. It's about Band of Skulls when it wasn't Band of Skulls. We were called Fleeing New York.

ezt: Oh, okay, and that's the secret?

rm: Yes, that was the secret bit. Chapter one is all chapter zero. It's the origin story.

ezt: [chuckling] Like the prequel. It's like a prequel?

rm: Yes, man. That's exactly what it is. The prequel for the trio.

ezt: One of the tracks that you shared a little snippet with your fans and the world from a 2009 live version a track called "Death by Diamonds and Pearls", and there seems to be some story behind that gig or you thinking it was a pivotal gig, or a pivotal night, or something like that. Can you share with us what that session or that live recording captured about who Band of Skulls was at that time?

rm: Yes, I can. It was a session. It was, back in the day, a call came from America from a guy called Alex Luke, and he said, "Are you this band that sings this song?" It was a song called "Hollywood Bowl". We were always dreaming of America. I was like, "Yes, we are." He was like, "Where are you?" "England." "What are you doing next week?" "Nothing." He's like, "Well, I'm going to come over and see you. I'm in LA." I was like, "No, this guy is not for real."

ezt: There's a general version of the song. It was in the album of general version?

rm: No, he heard a Fleeing New York thing on iTunes, or on a radio, college, something. He spent a couple of years trying to find the band that sung that song. As a man with equally as many records as you, actually, maybe the only person I know that his whole house is made of vinyl. He didn't give up, and he found us. Anyway, he came over, and he said, "That's great, Hollywood Bowl. Have you got any other songs?" We said, "Yes, we've got a couple of other songs. We've got one called "Death by Diamonds and Pearls". We've got another song called "I Know What I Am."

He's like, "Well, they're good. That one, "I Know What I Am" though, it could be improved. Do you mind if I mess around with it?" We were like, "Who is this guy?" Anyway, he's like, "Have you ever heard of Fleetwood Mac?" We were like, "Yeah." "Have you ever heard of the record, Tusk?" We were like, "No." [chuckles] He's like played it. I don't know how he did it. Obviously, he knew something.

He said, "Yes, do a bit of "Tusk" in the middle of "I Know What I Am" and send it to me, and I'll make sure people hear it." He was true to his word. At the time, his job was he was the head of iTunes, this guy.

ezt: Wow.

rm: He made sure that song was heard. We put that song out there. We went from a hundred listeners to a thousand listeners to a million listeners in the six months of this story. When we got to LA finally, we found ourselves loading into the famous Village Studios where Fleetwood Mac recorded Tusk. For six months, we were in our parents' garage and then we found ourselves in the room that inspired us to make the song that took us over the edge.

That's where we recorded a session including "I Know What I Am" and this version of "Death by Diamonds and Pearls", I thought it was the first full circle moment. It was cool to share that because it was we were looking around at each other, going, "What the hell?"

ezt: I love that song so much. Just as a single track, too, it's like one of the great rock and roll early 2000s songs. Where did you come up with the writing for that and the syncopation, and the way that the song is written that way? What can you tell me about the rhythmic qualities that you put together?

rm: I think I was always just trying to find something, a hook that stood out from other things. A lot of music at the time was very-- 2008 England was like indie scene and quite syncopated and edgy, and lots of fast playing. I guess I got this delay pedal and just hit it once and then at perfect repeats. I hit the guitar once, bop, and it went bop, bop. I was like, "Okay, I cut my workload by half now." It came around like that. We didn't have any money before.

We had a fast pedal, and we had wah-wah pedal. I had a tuner. Buying a delay pedal was luxury. Basically, it was me figuring out how the delay pedal works. Then I was like ting, ting, ting, ting. It sounded like a record instantly. Rather than me playing it and then having a variation, it felt like programmed in a weird way.

ezt: What about the vocals there though, the way that you duh, duh, duh, duh, duh? Was that influenced by anything or just it went along with what you were jamming with on the guitar?

rm: I was just trying to make it sassy as possible. I remember being in the studio, and we had songs a bit like it. I think back in the day in our early band, the song that we would love would be "Crosstown Traffic" by Jimi Hendrix. It's in B. I feel like this was our modern take on a song like that. It goes off into that place in the end, of course. I wrote a song. I took a trip over to Toronto, Canada, and Montreal before we got signed.

I didn't go to the States. I went over to market, I went over there. Most of the song is about my experience with people over there and just being a little bit a fish out of water. Of course, over there, all the roads are all iced up and heated up in the summer, so they're all cracked. Everyone's got crashed windshields in the car. I wrote the song about these people I met in Canada. [chuckles] It's just a day in the life song really. That's all. It was really from a real thing.

It was mainly about me being broke in a nightclub and drinking out with all these people being a bit fancy, having bottle services with-- bottle service vodka with fireworks in. [laughs] That's what it's about.

ezt: They were putting it on the credit card anyway. They didn't have any money either.

rm: Yes, I know that. Then we had the financial crisis, so yes, jokes on them.

ezt: What do you think it was about Baby Darling Doll Face Honey that resonated so powerfully with audiences? What do you think really connected with them?

rm: I really feel like it was what I said before, we were a real band. We'd been together for a few years before. We'd been written off a little bit. We weren't part of the scene. We made this record that really was from the heart. I feel like it was a bit of the last chance saloon for us. We gave up trying or pretending, or we gave up the pretense of trying to be cool and put a bit more heart and soul into it than we might have dared to before.

The band broke through with that song, "I Know What I Am", but then we broke through with another song "Death by Diamonds and Pearls", "Light of the Morning", "Patterns", "Fires", "Cold Fame", and the list goes on. What we had in the end, which I think is still a rare thing in anyone's career, we had a record where every song meant something to someone. It was like the greatest hits of our early years. That's what it feels like to me. Our first album, like a lot of debuts, is all of your best songs.

Then we had six months to write a second album. That was when it got really interesting.

ezt: As you say, the difficult second album. What can you tell us about that?

rm: It's difficult because you've got your best songs out. [chuckles] You're like, "How are you going to do now?" It was an interesting time. What was actually going on is the success of the first album meant that we did a world American tour, and then we did another American tour. We went around again for the months, so we didn't have any time off. We were so self-conscious not to write the clichéd life on the road album. What the record was in the end was, I think, quite interesting.

I always think that Baby Darling has got the sunshine on it. It's like the Californian sunshine. Then Sweet Sour it's in the cold winter again. It's this slightly blow out recovering from that first flurry of fame. We spent a winter it seems, and then the following summer out in the English countryside. We ended up over in Wales at the famous Rockfield Studios, and found ourselves sat at the piano where Freddie did "Bohemian Rhapsody" and all of this.

It was just the surreal world from our parents' garage. It was a wild time. It was difficult because we were just coming to terms with our success or our breakthrough. Before we knew it, we had already put down another album. We were back on the road again. It was almost like one big experience, to us, those two albums.

ezt: What lessons about persistence in the face of what you just mentioned, the persistence and the creativity that you needed to get through those times, and you said it was really a decade-long climb, but what lessons about persistence do you think people can take from your journey, maybe from the beginning?

rm: I'm not gloating on the fact, oh, yes, we worked really hard or extra hard to deserve it, and I hope people can break through. People deserve to pick up a guitar and pick up some instruments or write a song that breaks through whenever. I'm not saying it should be a decade-long thing, but it hardened us up. The lesson is I guess getting signed isn't the win. It's the beginning. That's like you've got the pair of shoes to start the race. I think we learned back then, sometimes the hard way.

We were still quite green when we first arrived. I remember we went out with Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and they were seasoned and super cool and so sweet to us, but we didn't know what we were doing. I just remember we hadn't really done a tour before. We were shown the ropes of rock and roll by some of the coolest people. That band, especially. I know they're doing a comeback this year, too. I have great memories and great-- that music is so evocative for me because it was when I was learning how to do it, maybe don't wear the white socks on stage. They really show up, that stuff. Rob taught me how to be a cool guy. Just keep it cool.

ezt: It worked for Michael Jackson.

rm: Well, yes, it worked for him, but if you're dancing, maybe it works, but stuff like that. Yes, we learn we learn in public actually, and there are lots of shows where it wasn't perfect but we learned out there, and so I don't know if the world's more forgiving then still social media and stuff going on, but every time we did something well, we repeated it. Every time something didn't work, we would drop that along or that song with the idea. We just played every single night of our lives, so we got to workshop it out there outside, on the road.

ezt: As you were going through the different albums and getting them prepared for the new box set, were you struck by any sonic differences? Were any of the albums-- did they surprise you? Oh, I didn't think this was that raw or produced or vice versa. Did anything come away with you about the records sonically as you were going through them?

rm: It's interesting. I want to pay tribute to the other people, the band was making it, but the first album was produced and mixed by Ian Davenport. He was like the fourth member. We were tight, and so it was like our taste and his taste combined, and that was it was very small. We definitively made a sound we all agreed on was the sound we wanted to go through both with. Ian told me, "Don't do all of your ideas on your first album because then you've got nothing left to show. Just do the core of your ideas, like keep it simple."

That was a great lesson, I think that's what's happening on that album is there's not many layers of guitar and a few things in there, but they're quite subtle. Then the second album Ian and Us Band recorded the album over in Rockfield, and then it was mixed over in LA by Nick Lorne which led on to future projects. There was this duality to the album and the hard rock songs, especially, I think you could see where the band were going because Nick brought something else that-- he gave us a little bit of-- it was like a mirror on ourselves, a change up of how it's going.

We wanted to explore that, and on the third album, we went into studio with Nick as a producer. Although it was scary and it was difficult to leave our group with Ian as well. It was a tough transition wasn't easy. It didn't feel great to stop that collaboration, but especially I was really keen to work with as many people as possible, and perhaps in myself proved that it wasn't just this combination that made it happen, and that working with different people could bring something else. On the third album, Himalayan, it was Nick just going to town on it, and that was probably more produced, but still love it in a different way, that they're all very different.

I'm glad that they're not all the same. There's a progression through the three albums that's quite natural with that he worked on them and also, a shout out to Adam Greenspan, he was the engineer with Nick, and also was like another producer there. He's gone on to do some incredible stuff, idols, et cetera. We hadn't read some great, talented people to work with to help realize our albums, and it was more of a progression than a big change.

ezt: Now, what do you recall about recording? Were any of these recorded in analog, or I would imagine probably mostly digital, although originally, did they come out on vinyl, or has anything been remastered or remixed with a box set: what were you using to put this set together?

rm: I mean, but as we made them, it was as analog as we could afford. The time we looked up to that era. We didn't want to move too far forward, maybe modern subject matter and stuff, but not modern techniques, because our favorite records were made just before we broke through, so we were on to tape on the first album for sure, and I know was originally mixed and mastered over in LA. We experienced probably towards the end of an era of that record-making art form. The one thing we said when we got signed is we have to have a vinyl, so Baby Darling was pressed. I think it might’ve been a thousand copies at the beginning.

ezt: I bet it's was worth a lot of money.

rm: It's long sold out.

ezt: While you're talking, I'm going to look up how much it's worth. I bet it's worth a lot of money.

rm: I think I've given mine away. I don't think I can afford to get it. Discogs, eBay.

ezt: I wonder what it is. I bet it's a lot of money.

rm: Yes, first pressing, so it's long out of date.

ezt: This will be the first pressing since then, I guess, on vinyl?

rm: It's the first pressing of that since 2009 -- oh, yes, it's been some reissues, but I want to make it out there again to be available to people that want to own it on vinyl. That's it really, and also into the future for all the records, really, because they're all short run. Original 2009.

ezt: July 28, 2009, today is May 21st, 2025, it's worth median $81, but there's only one copy being sold right now, and that is in Switzerland, and it's going for $203!

rm: There you go. The Swiss have taste. I reckon well, so we’ll call it $150.00 then, which is nuts. All right.

ezt: Yes, cool. I'm sure it'd be fun to look up the others. Did the others come out on vinyl as well at the release?

rm: Yes, they’re equally rare, I'm sure, yes.

ezt: I'm sure your fans have been probably asking for this, and have you gotten a lot of feedback from them about, "Hey put it back all out on vinyl and you should do this,” and because you're a band that translates to that the analog sound very well too, I think.

rm: Yes, literally for years. I'd love to own on vinyl, I know there's albums and all three of them in different ways are special to people. I know they are. I've seen the tattoos, I've heard about the wedding things, and these amazing things where people tell you how the songs have transcended what we did with them, and are important in their lives. We all have music that's important to us. For the Band of Skulls to be that to some people, it's just the biggest honor. To me, it's about keeping up-to-date, and of course, they've been remastered for this as well.

I learned a lot about that, I mean, I didn't realize that things have to be remastered. You see these classic bands being remastered. It isn't just about making more copies and selling it again. You have to make the music technically up-to-date to be used less on TV or whatever like that. It's not becoming archaic the way it's presented, the way it's mixed, the way if it was placed on a show, it would only come out of your TV and not the surrounds, in the cinema? Also, as all of our listening habits change. It's just those parameters change a little bit, and we didn't have some of the things we have now in 2009.

We wouldn't have known it. I think it's a good way of doing it to make a record an album and make it to the best quality as you can at the time, but it doesn't mean that in the future you might have to just tweak and just look after it. I feel like the custodian of this music, I'll make sure it's well looked after and it continues to flourish for years to come, and for more people to hear it. That's the process of this project, and it's been fun to tell some of the background story on it. One of the more interesting things I found for the first album, no, yes, talking about it being on tape, I've got the tape, and it's a big tape.

It's got a box, and you can get about three songs on each tape, and it says the take that you took. Take two, "I Know What I Am", and I open one of the boxes up and it's got the engineer's notes and it's got the settings of all the knobs and controls of each thing if you were to put it back on a desk, how to get it back to the mix all in one pencil and then on mixing, this often you have this long piece of white tape which marks the faders and it says "guitar one" and "Russell", and whatever all this, and drums and whether. That folded up like this snake, I opened up and it was like there is, it's like four or five things: guitar, tambourine, drums, and it's so simple.

At one point, we were making this up out of thin air and and then it feels so hard to undo it now. It feels so together like records do, right? How can you possibly take out that part of that classic record that, at one point, we put it in? That's interesting to me, really.

ezt: It is, the first album came out 2009, and I think Spotify got going around 2006. When you guys started, there was still this physical media push. You were selling CDs at your shows, of course, and it was just at the beginning of streaming. Now it's different, now everything is streaming. That is a preferred way for people to upload music. Well, did that hit you while you were going through the box set? Were you thinking like "Geez, this is sort of, we're stepping back in time making these things physical again with this," or maybe it was in consideration?

rm: I think it's both ways. Yes, we've all been streaming everything now for a while, and there's something great about it, and I'm fine. I found I find records that I would never have found, and I love discovering new music, and it's brilliant for that. It's a great way of communicating music to other people around the world. We could share, check this out, and even the putting together this project. There'll be some songs there that will be in streaming format, and I want to put some of the unreleased stuff up into that, a playlist of that. At the same time, we're putting previously unreleased demos onto vinyl.

Again, duality, what? When I made this demo I remember I would say, in the kitchen I was probably hitting -- I think I had some chopsticks and hitting some saucepan and had a guitar and I was making a demo just to show the producer and the band my idea meaning the next day we do it for real and the idea of mixing and mastering the demo. It sounds nice on a piece of vinyl. It's just funny, I love it, and those things are precious, and I discovered a few things. There's some early versions of the song "Friends and Bruises" and there's some sketchy versions of the beginnings of songs that we had "I Know What I Am" and instrumental versions of us just playing it through.

Probably the take before we did the vocals, or the take either side of the take that would be used. The same day, it feels wrong to me to hear it slightly different. It was like "Wow, we must have just struck gold on take three," and thank the producer for seeing we did it on take three and didn't let us go on to take 23, where we would have ruined it all.

ezt: It's so funny and that comes up when I listen to these demos especially of songs that are well-known and a song that has congealed in your mind over so many years and you think this is a take that's so close, but yet so far away from the finished version that it's always funny.

rm: It's like those dreams where you have a glass of water and you can't quite put it on the table, it feels like that, "Oh, [chuckles] where's the tambourine?" Oh, yes, we didn't go down to the music store and buy it that afternoon, and cut whatever. It feels like slightly uncanny valley, but fascinating.

ezt: It made all the difference. Talk a little bit about the Village session a little more. As I understand, that's the new stuff really that's in the box set. That's what your fans and people that purchases the set will want to hear, so that'll be mostly new to them, right?

rm: There's some of that but it's also like I said, there's demos, I think people wanted to make the box set and repurpose and reimagine and remaster the old songs, of course, that's what it is a reissue but I was keen to not only tell this early story for this physical memorabilia. Also, I realized I was the only one with this archival access to this archive, where I could find the demo of the song before we went into the studio. It would have been the day before the week before, and sometimes the demo is why the song is chosen. There's something special about the demo. That's why it makes the cut to at least be tried.

The Village Session, and a couple more of those things. It's almost the opposite. You've made the demo, you've made the record, and then you go into a studio and do a live version without an audience. It's probably the closest you're going to get to being in the studio when the song went down. That's the closest version of it, in a controlled environment, and then you find yourselves in a famous studio, and there's something about it. You can feel the vibes, as I say, but you can feel this other thing. If a classic record's been made in a room, you can't help imagining that when you're in there. You're like, "Wow, that's where Stevie Knicks would have been." Yes, can you imagine? "This is when the band broke up." "We're in Fleetwood Mac's divorce scene."

ezt: They had an argument here at the refrigerator.

rm: Oh, yes, and all the other things that must have gone down back in the day. It has a certain thing when you listen back to your performance, and you think something is there. It's different on that day. You perform the song every night of your life in a concert, but on that day we went to that famous place and did it, and someone recorded it pretty well, and you scratch your name on that wall as well. I just love being a part of the greater rock and roll history, whether it's UK and America, especially New York and LA have got these, and Nashville, of course, have got these, and Chicago, the whole thing. There's this interrelationship where my American friends get a massive kick about coming over here. I don't know, playing Brixton Academy, or going to Abbey Road. I think we have the same fandom and the same fascination with the idea of, "Oh, could we ever get into the basement of Capital Records, and oh, I went to Motown and that was a special one."

I want to look at the floorboards and the cigarette machines in those places, and imagine what went back. What went on in the day and night, and that's Village Studios. Although it's a little bit different. I think there's a sense of occasion as a musician that you perform a little bit better when you know it's a special room.

ezt: Sure. Russell, if you had one of the bands you're friendly with, and they were considering doing a box set, they were considering doing what you did in retrospective over the last 15 years, what would you say to them? What advice might you give them, or what would you tell them to be aware of as they embark on that journey?

rm: I would say that it's something that you are opening up. You are delving into your psyche and opening up into your past. Be ready to live in that for a minute, and meet your old self, and meet the beginnings of yourself. I think it is more than just showing a few old pictures. You have to go there. Also in my house, I turned out these boxes coming out from the attic.

I'll tell you this one story, I was doing it, and my house was covered with all this stuff. I was trying to put it into some order. Some chronological order. That's black and white. That's hand-drawn. That's from 2000 and whatever, yada, yada. Good, I’ve gone through the whole thing. I was doing this whole bit. Then I was like, "I need to go out the front of my house." I just opened the front door and looked out, and there was this person admiring the flowers in my front garden. Kind of normal. I was like, "Good morning." It's England, right? We're all so close together.

Then the person said, "Oh my God." I said the same thing. It was my old college friend, and it was the other member of the band from the before days. The fourth member. [laughs] She was there. Just by chance and by fate, she was looking at the garden. She was like, "Oh, I was just passing and admiring the roses." I was like, "I've just got all these pictures of our past out in the front room of the house."

ezt: Wow.

rm: We went for a cup of coffee. She said, "I've got all this other stuff." She came back a couple weeks later and gave me all these old pictures I'd never seen our formative years all on printed photos as well as on film. That is what I would say, once you open up Pandora's Box, you never know what's going to happen.

I got more than I bargained for on that one, and so did she. It was quite a wonderful moment. That's it really. We all have a bigger history than we can almost think about on a day-to-day, it's too much, isn't it, to comprehend. Yes, I’d do it once. Then, if you really successful, do it later on, do it twice, do a second retrospective.

ezt: You'll do another one, another 15 years. With over 100 million streams, and you've got a new tour. That's what I hear, at least. That's what I'm told. That was only the ones that I did. I did 100 million.

rm: Yes. Bring the money together. They give you $100 per stream.

ezt: Right, right. You got a new tour on the horizon, and you're balancing this nostalgia with moving forward. Artistically, how are you thinking about the next phase, and maybe how did revisiting the past make you think about what you're going to be doing in the future?

rm: Well, it was a natural thing because I've been making a new album as well, as well as this retrospective thing as well. I've been dividing my time with looking back on the reasons why I got into music and the decisions and the things, what formed my opinion and the signposts I took, and as well as getting the guitar and writing new songs. Through all of this time, I am the only original member of the band continuing. I've been working with all these different musicians, and I have a new band, and I've been working in all these other different ways.

What I've realized and what I've seen is the continuing strand that's still there. It's quite apparent now that everything else has changed. I can now really recognize when things are the same, and I've been making this new album with a fantastic band and in some amazing places. I even got to go to Abbey Road Studio too, and lay down some music and singing in what I consider the Cathedral of the Beatles. It was just beyond all of my dreams come true. Yet, when I came home, I was like, "It's missing something." I got my original -- not just the same model, but my original Big Muff Fuzz pedal, the one from the first album, my first pedal.

I did all the solos with that, with one guitar, one pedal, one cable, and it brought it right back. I feel as so much is changing in the world and in my life as well, this record feels like home. My new music feels more grounded in where I started than anything I've done for a long time. There's no orchestras. I'm like, "Oh yes. This is it. This is rock and roll." Funny enough, it feels like, oh, whatever would've happened, I would still would've made this record now. Funny.