British-born, American-raised rock cat Barns Courtney has lived at least nine lives, but it’s on his new concert album Live and Wired, recorded in Paris, that he truly comes into his own. The man has survived a disastrous (by his own account) appearance on a U.K. talent show judged by Blur’s Alex James; getting dropped by several record labels; having his master tapes held hostage and his teen years “stolen” by pop producer RedOne; witnessing a bizarre love triangle involving a member of the Struts; being fired from a lucrative bread TV commercial; recording a surprise sleeper hit with Furbies, filing cabinets, and a future Eurovision contestant; nearly being coerced into joining a crooner boy band; and releasing an epic but little-heard dystopian rock opera that will hopefully one day be recognized a cult classic. And he has lived to tell the tales.

And oh, what tales! In the highly entertaining video interview above, and the Q&A edited for brevity and just a bit of much-needed clarity below, the rock ‘n’ roll storyteller and showman dishes about all of this and more. He also previews his next studio LP, out in 2027 — a major artistic departure, even for a guy who’s done everything from sci-fi concept records to one-man acoustic tours — which he describes as “very expansive” and “quite a sad album” about “estrangement and loss.” But it also features strings and “the most ’50s, white-sounding” Elvis choir, of course.

This was a fun one. Let the Barns door fling open!

LYNDSANITY: Live and Wired reminds me of a classic era when a lot of rock stars launched their careers with iconic live albums — Cheap Trick at Budokan, Frampton Comes Alive, KISS Alive — because those albums showcased them at their best. And I feel Live and Wired captures that for you. Epic concert albums like this aren’t all that common anymore.

BARNS COURTNEY: Yeah, it’s so uncommon because you get punished on Spotify for releasing a live album! They won’t playlist any of it, and they won’t let it be in any playlists. I think they just decided they had too much music and they had to draw the line, and the live albums are not allowed. So, it’s on there, but it’s very difficult even to let your own fans know on Spotify that you have it.

But you’re known for your amazing live shows, and it does feel like I’m at your concert when I listen to this album. I was surprised to learn it was recorded in France, because there’s this stereotype that French audiences would be snooty, particularly to an American or British artist, and wouldn’t be going apeshit like this.

I really did [assume that] too, but God bless ‘em, for whatever reason, my Parisian fans are probably some of the most enthusiastic fans that I have anywhere. I have no idea what I did to deserve them. … I played an acoustic show in Paris on this last run and they were going fucking tits before I even came out on the stage. It was like a full-on rock show. For the first time in my career, the entire audience was putting their crossed fingers up in the air to mimic the logo on my T-shirts and waving them around. I crowd-surfed — acoustic crowd-surfed! There were three encores. I’d ever played three encores in my fucking life! I ran out of songs! I am so overwhelmingly grateful for those people and lucky to have them.

Didn’t you meet the musicians who play on this record at the French bistro La Poubelle in L.A.?

I love that bar, but I met the guitar player in Home Depot. He was the only other man in Home Depot also wearing a velvet suit. I saw him walking about the plant section, like a glam-rock velociraptor, and I was like, “Who’s that?” He wandering about the ferns. And then I pulled up to the checkout with this enormous, towering fern on my cart, and I looked to my left and there was that velveteen man with the exact same fern in his cart.

You were between two ferns!

Literally between two ferns. Zach Galifianakis and Obama.

So, you went up to him and bro’d out over plants?

“I must know your name!” Yeah, we just got on like a house on fire. And then we put this band together and there was lightning in a bottle from the word go. They were just amazing. I finished the U.S. tour and I said to my label, “Please, please let me do a live record. These guys sound so fantastic. I need to capture this, because I may never have this band again.” People in between tours, they have to keep eating and get different jobs with different bands, you know. But this is how my records are supposed to sound.

It’s actually dawned on me that one reason why artists don’t make concert records like they used to is because touring is so expensive. But you’ve built your reputation the old-fashioned way, by touring and playing live, which is increasingly rare. You sort of bucked the odds.

I mean, I don’t know how much touring has helped me. I do it because I love it so much — everything about it, from being on the road with people that I love to exploring new cities to hanging out with strange people in strange lands. And the shows, of course. But I was thinking about this yeste rday: I reckon if I had never played a show and spent the same amount of time that I’ve spent touring just making social media content, I would probably be way, way more successful than I am. Because that is the way that people discover music now. I’m not saying people don’t like shows and people don’t find bands they like at festivals, but I would say it’s shifted majorly into online discovery.

Well, you’ve taken many risks in your career. Live and Wired is a risk, for all the reasons we’ve discussed. But we must talk about your previous album, Supernatural! It was a lavish concept record. When are we going to get the Supernatural rock opera tour, Supernatural on Broadway, or Supernatural on film like Tommy or The Wall?

I really did have big ambitions for that album. There was a huge story. I wrote a massive backstory and tons of lore, and it was meant to be explored through music videos, comic books, stage sets. But halfway through making that album, my record label was sold in its entirety to Warner. And I found myself on Elektra, their imprint, with a team that just didn’t care about any of my music. It was heartbreaking. The eponymous single was the best-reacting song I’d ever had at social media, more so than anything I’d ever released, and it kept cycling back to the top of all of these charts — and they wouldn’t take it seriously to radio! “Oh, we don’t know if this is going to work.” And then they all got fired. And then I had a new team that gave even less of a shit. And then Warner Bros. dissolved Elektra. … So, the whole album campaign just fell apart. My new label, Avenue A, very valiantly put the record out despite not getting a great deal on the money side of things, but you know, a label wants to promote an album that they made.

Well, in case any movie execs or Broadway big-wigs are watching or reading this interview, what’s the lore? What’s the Supernatural elevator pitch? I want the whole plot. I’ve got all day. I don’t know if you do, but I’m here for it.

I literally do have all day. I’m just sitting here at my mom’s house, enormously hungover. I’m not going anywhere.

You sound pretty lucid for someone who’s hungover.

I do feel quite lucid. I had a lot of espresso martinis last night. I think I still got the caffeine in me. OK, here we go [reads aloud]: The year is 2070. As imagined and influenced from 1969, Rocky Horror, a Kira-esque cult leader, set to the backdrop of a Mad Max dystopian future. Governments, as we know them, are a distant memory amidst a world destroyed by climate change. Nomadic tribes fight for survival amidst the remaining habitable areas of the Earth. The weakest being pushed to the edges of the dead zones. The ancient oil mascots of the past have become deified. A vague memory of the power they held has turned their symbols into sigils, wielded by opposing factions in battle. As the story progresses, the world is widened to reveal huge floating cities, warships, and other retrofuturism in the style of Miyazaki’s Castle in the Sky, Cowboy Bebop, and Barbarella, underpinned with the stylized gore of Kill Bill‘s animated scenes. The entire aesthetic should look something like it was dreamt up in the late ’60s, crossed with classic anime feel.”

Wow, you had a whole deck! You had a PowerPoint ready to show me.

Yeah, that’s just the elevator pitch, but there’s a huge amount of stuff. I sent it to the label and they were just like, “Oh.” It really freaked them out.

In a good way or a bad way?

I just think they were like, “How the fuck are we supposed to market this?” People get scared by a dumptruck of information. I think the way to do it is to just give them the songs. And then when they ask, “What’s the music video?,” then I can just give them that specific video, and I’ll hold onto the whole backstory myself as I use it to inform.

Well, Garth Brooks tried to do that with Chris Gaines and it didn’t work out. But what was the inspiration for this very ambitious Supernatural project?

It was the realization that there are so many parallels between cults and fan culture. And I thought, wouldn’t it be fun to just create my own cult? Which I attempted to do, failed at, and then Sleep Token did it much better.

Was this inspired by any bad experiences you had, like with parasocial or crazy fans?

No, I think I was just very bored of myself. I’d done six years on the road nonstop, talking about myself a lot. I was just bored and I made up a character to make writing interesting again. … It’s been so long since I talked about this! It’s cool that anyone cares. He’s this cult leader, basically. He was born in this little shanty town on the outskirts of this dystopian world. And his father was a preacher who preserved enormous amounts of books to help preserve the written word, but only so that he could preserve the word of God because he was extremely militantly religious. And so, this young kid who’s quite naturally expressive isn’t allowed to go outside. Everything’s a sin, he has to stay inside, and he amuses himself by reading his father’s massive book collection — which he’s not supposed to, but he sneaks down at night. And anyway, one day he’s kidnapped by a band of nomadic raiders and taken off to be a slave for these people. And he’s so charming and amusing that over the years he becomes one of them and starts going on his own raids and stealing people and supplies and eventually comes back to his original place of birth. And the people who are so green, they’re shocked by this foul-mouthed individual who’s got this bizarre way of dressing. And he’s rebelling against and mirroring his father simultaneously, and becomes a cult leader because he doesn’t want to be like his dad, but he’s also got that subconscious desire to be the same dude. And so, that’s the origin of the whole story. And he’s selling snake oil. He professes to have communed with the devil and have the devil’s own luck, which is why there’s the cross-finger-logo pentagram. But he’s full of shit. He’s selling snake oil. And he uses these ideals of hedonism and proto-feminism to inspire people to follow him.

Well, damn. Supernatural was your last proper studio album, in 2023. Even though that wasn’t that long ago, given where we’re at in 2026, I feel the material is more relevant than ever. Did you ever perform the album live in its entirety in any way, even as a one-off?

No, I never did. I played some songs from it. And I was working on a comic book for it as well, because every song is a story from the record. [Get outs his phone and shows screen] So, this is the [comic book] cover. There’s the cult leader, and this is the episode where he dresses up as Mother Teresa and robs a bank. And this is Ophelia, his femme fatale. They meet fighting for resources. She leads her own gang and they fall in love.

How did this record connect at the time with your diehard fans? And do your fans have a name, by the way,? Are they called Barnsheads?

I really need to come up with a name for my fanbase. They call themselves the Barnacles, which I hate.

Why? Because they’re glomming onto you?

It’s just not sexy. Barnacles aren’t sexy. We need a sultry little name for ourselves.

photo: Savanah K. Christian

Well, regardless of what they’re called, how did they react to Supernatural?

I think the ones that knew about it liked it. It was just very difficult to promote that record, and it just came out in such a staggered way. It was hard to get any press around it.

Well, here I am, doing the Lord’s work three years later.

Thank God you’re here! But yeah, it was very difficult. It was probably the hardest album that I’ve ever made, just because of the circumstances. I mean, I had to make and release it across three record labels.

Well, hopefully because of the way the internet works, it’ll have another life. But I’m sure now that I’ve spent all this time speaking with you about Supernatural, it will not surprise you to know that I’m also very into the Eurovision Song Contest. So, to find out that you used to work with this year’s U.K. Eurovision contestant, Look Mum No Computer, aka Sam Battle, excited me to no end.

Isn’t that crazy? … I think his [Eurovision] performance wasn’t a good representation of him, because if you see his live show, he’s got this incredible homemade modular synthesizer that he manipulates live, with a keyboard attached that he plays live. And then there’s this studio SM7 microphone attached to the synthesizer that he’s singing in live, in a boiler suit, thrashing around, and it’s very authentic. To see him miming the keys, doing a dance routine with his synthesizer nowhere in sight, it was a very watered-down version of what he actually does. Also, I just don’t think it was his best song. I really felt for him because I’m a huge fan of his work. But if you go on Spotify and you listen to his song “Desperado” or a couple of the other ones, “Groundhog Day,” they’re so good and the lyrics are genuinely interesting and innovative. And I just thought that one was a bit naff. Sorry, Sam! I love you!

You and Sam worked together a lot, on some of your biggest songs. I don’t know if you ever did anything with his Furbies. If you did, I’m all interested to hear about that, because I know Sam would play music on toys and various objects.

We were going to have 50 Furbies all wired together.

I want a Supernatural rock opera with Furbies!

I think we used the Furby organ, but we found that it didn’t really sound that different to any other organ. It wasn’t immediately obvious that it was Furbies. But it was all in the mix. … I miss working with that guy. We made “Glitter & Gold” together. He was living in a crumbling old folks’ home that the government had abandoned, basically. He was doing this thing called a guardianship, where you pay the government a small sum of money in exchange for the privilege of being their live-in security guard. We made “Glitter & Gold” with filing cabinets for drums, with one microphone. And they knocked the place down, so we’ll never get those sounds again.

“Glitter & Gold” is one example of how your success has come in unexpected or unorthodox ways. That was one of your biggest hits, at least in America.

It’s my only platinum record, and I made it for $0.

How did it break through? It was not on the radio, from what I recall.

It was never a single. It was never promoted, and it didn’t really explode in popularity either. It just trickled in the plays, and they just kept coming. To this day, it’s still my most-streamed song. Just over the course of 10 years, it never stopped growing, and it went platinum.

That’s surprising. I would assume “Fire” would be your biggest song, because Bradley Cooper handpicked it for a movie.

Yes, and that one was on radio. It was promoted as a single. Yeah, it’s so bizarre. But it gives me hope in a way, because I feel like if I make music that genuinely connects with people, it’ll find its way eventually.

That seems to have happened a lot with you. You were talking about the issues that happened with Supernatural and Elektra dropping the ball, but you just kept going. You’re a survivor. That wasn’t your first experience like that. That happened to you when you were 19 with your old band, Dive Bella Dive, right?

It’s happened to me so many times. I think I’ve been signed to every major label, apart from Sony.

Did Dive Bella Dive’s album even come out? I’m under the impression that you made a whole record. It’s sadly an all-too-common thing in the business, where an artist makes a whole album but then it gets shelved.

To this day, I have no idea what happened. We made it with Lady Gaga’s producer, RedOne. … He was trying to get into rock music. He made a record with U2 that was panned by the critics — or universally hated, I should say. … I don’t know if he got into an argument with the record label, but we finished the album, flew back to England, and then for three years we waited for him to send the album to the label. It didn’t go anywhere else, because he was in the contract. Three years. And then the label were like, “Look guys, we’re sorry, but with no music for three years, we’re just hemorrhaging money on this project. You’re dropped.” And then I had no qualifications, nothing, no credit in the industry, because I hadn’t put anything out. And then I just ate shit for another three years, selling cigarettes at nightclubs, handing out free samples of Lipton’s iced tea in a muscle suit and Crocs, selling laptops. I was in random-ass commercials and did extra work.

What commercials? I’ll look for them on YouTube.

When I was young and sexy, I did one for this hair product called VO5. It’s really funny. Basically, everyone’s hair in the commercial gets messed up apart from mine, because I use VO5.

You’re still young and sexy. And you still have fabulous hair. Don’t sell yourself short.

That’s right! Tell ‘em! I was in a bread commercial too. Oh my God. I was joking around with the sound guy behind the set. I came onto the set with the main girl, knowing he could hear me, and I was like, “Hey, you know that sound guy? Did he strike you as weird at all? Every time I go past him, he keeps touching me and saying I’m ‘Disneyland for his hands.’” I’m thinking to myself, “Barns, you’re so hilarious. We’re going to have such a laugh about this when I get back.” I come off the set after the take, and this stern woman appears that I hadn’t seen before. And she goes, “The entirety of the bread company team was watching you on a monitor and heard everything you said.” And I was like, “Oh no, no, no, you don’t understand. Me and the sound guy, we were joking. It wasn’t real.” And she goes, “Well, what about all those comments you made about making your own mayonnaise for the sandwiches?” I got fired. It was going to be an ongoing yearly commercial where I meet this girl at college and then we get married and then we have kids. It was a guaranteed 10 grand a year. They just stopped the entire thing.

Oh man, that sucks. But going back to music, after the shelved RedOne album, what was next?

I signed another deal, and then lost that deal a month after I signed. And that was five years. … I was trying to get out of this deal with this label that doesn’t care. And then finally I’m out, and that’s when I signed to the 300 — who got sold to Warner, who dissolved. And now I’m on Avenue A. Woo.

There had to have been a time when you thought, “Maybe music’s not for me. Maybe it’s time to get a real job.” Did you ever consider giving up music?

I think the double-edged sword about how I’m wired is that I am so deeply depressed when I’m doing anything else. I think in the early days when I signed my first deal as a solo artist, everyone would say, “Wow, what tremendous willpower you must have to have gotten dropped and suffer and then come back and do it again!” And I really have the worst willpower of anyone that I know and I’m terribly undisciplined, but I was just so unprecedentedly, deeply, viciously depressed when not making music and playing shows. I think some people are wired in such a way where they do their job and it’s not their favorite thing, but they love their family and they go on vacations and they have fun on the weekends. And for whatever reason, I just can’t. Even when it’s brutally difficult and it just looks like I’ve got absolutely no prospects, I just can’t. Even then I refused to get even a normal 9-to-5, and I made way less money than I could have, doing odd jobs — because I wanted to be free at a moment’s notice to go into the studio at any time.

Was your family saying, “Now Barns, it’s time to grow up”?

Oh, yeah. My dad and stepmom, just constantly. I remember I got on my first televised battle of the bands [with SleeperCell] on national television, and the first thing my stepmom said to me was, “How do you think it will feel to not win a battle of the bands?” The first thing she said! They were always like, “What are you going to do when this music thing doesn’t work out? ” And to be honest, I did kind of suck, but people don’t know what you’ve got inside and how serious you are about it.

What TV show was it?

It was called Orange unsignedAct. Alex James from Blur was on the judging panel. It was very English. It was on English TV. If you watch that show, you will see how not modest I’m being when I say I sucked so hard. I was so bad.

Did you ever try take the talent-show thing more seriously? The X Factor was a huge show in England back then.

They were really gunning for me, those guys. What I found out was those shows all scout talent and make it seem like people audition, but they’re out hunting for people. And they went after me hard. I was trying to see if I could parlay their interest into just getting a record deal because I had songs, so I’d go into the label and be like, “Oh, I’ve written this, do you like this? ” And they were like, “No. Be on the show.”

Why didn’t you do it?

I just feel with that audience, people are fans of the show. So, even if you do very well, it’s very difficult to get them to then continue to be a fan of you. … If you’re not the exception to the rule, if you’re not One Direction, then you just become “this guy that was on The X Factor five years ago,” very quickly. And that has a stigma attached to it — that you don’t write your own songs, that you’re not authentic, that you’re an industry product. I just didn’t want that.

So, what was your real career breakthrough? Was it when “Fire” was in Bradley Cooper’s Burnt?

It’s just been a lot of stops and starts and just grinding. I would get a break with this Bradley Cooper movie and the label that wanted to drop me would be like, “OK, I guess we’ll keep him on, because he’s getting songs that are making us money in films.” But then I would have to fight this label to promote anything that was coming out. Or like, when my song “99” was top three at alt radio, we couldn’t get them to put any effort in or any money to take it to the next stage. Thank God my beautiful radio reps from Capitol worked their asses off; I’d never even met my A&R at that record label. Yeah, it’s been tough. It’s been a lot of little micro-victories that have stacked up over the years.

I think you have a great story, especially because some naysayers claim rock is dead, but you’ve forged your own path while staying in that genre. During all of your label struggles, did anyone ever advise you, “Maybe you should collab with this rapper,” or “Maybe you should make a pop record,” or “Don’t be so rock?”

I had a manager once who wanted me to be in the first ever brass-big-band boy band. He was like, “What about Frank Sinatra-type songs, but it’s a boy band?” A crooner boy band. I don’t know. For the most part in my career, I’ve just been naively convincing myself that rock’s coming back any minute now: “It’s coming back, it’s coming back!” But I think it actually is now.

Do you see yourself being part of that trend, or maybe even having helped kick that revival into gear?

Oh, I wish that I could say that! I think that I have been on my own little cloud with an extremely enthusiastic, loyal cult following, but I think I’ve been completely separate to what’s going on in popular culture. Ironically, when I play festivals, tons of people come up to me and they’re like, “Oh, I’ve got three of your songs in my playlist, but I had no idea who you are!” For whatever reason, it hasn’t really broken through. But it’s cool. I mean, with the live album, I just put out three videos of all the live shows, and you can look at these videos and see what we made — me and my little scrappy fanbase.

There are many artists in your position, who’ve had deals fall through or industry people who didn’t quite understand them, that might be feeling discouraged. And they would love to have your career now. What advice would you give them about persevering?

You just have to decide, “This is what I want to do with my life, and I’m not going to quit until I fucking die.” Because you don’t really fail until you stop. I think there’s three of us from the music college that I got kicked out of in my second year who have careers in music. And everybody else who doesn’t, they quit. They quit. And I’ve failed so many times. Failure is the only steppingstone to success, and the master has failed more times than the apprentice has even tried. You have to fail again and again and again and suck. You have to go out there and suck. And then eventually things slowly start to improve and things take on momentum. You put yourself out there, and fate has a way of meeting you halfway. And you just keep going and grinding and grinding and visualize every day, not because the world is magic — it might be, I don’t know — but because your mind is this fantastic computer and your subconscious has an incredible ability to cherry-pick useful information to take you to where you want to go. So, if you’re priming it every day, bludgeoning it into submission, as Arnold Schwarzenegger says, you could be the best pilot in the world, but if you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll just fly around in circles. Optimism is a hugely successful strategy because it gives you energy and gumption to attack your goals head-on every day without feeling tired or deflated. So, for the love of God, just pour everything into it. Casanova was imprisoned for all of his misdeeds with various people’s wives, in the only prison in Europe that was inescapable — and he was the only guy ever to get out. And they said, “Casanova, how did you do that? How did you escape this prison? You’re just a slut. How did you do it? ” And he said, “I just applied the same strategy that I apply to courting women, which is don’t focus on anything else but that specific goal.” So, it is possible, but you have to put all your eggs in one basket. It’s so funny to me how our vocational guidance counselors, teachers, parents always say specifically for creativity, “Yo, you better have a backup plan.” Why is this the only job that you have to have a backup plan for? If you’re studying to be a doctor, that’s really hard, and yet no one says to you, “Well, that’s very difficult. You have to be very clever and go to a lot of school. You better study law simultaneously, in case the doctorate doesn’t work out.”

Very true. So, what is next for you? Obviously you’re a man of many big ideas and lofty ambitions.

The studio album’s almost done. It’s really close. I did two-thirds of it with Jonathan Wilson, who did Father John Misty’s first two records that I love. It’s very expansive: strings, Elvis choir, horns, very ’70s, very folksy, Beatles-y rock kind of vibes. But very introspective. It’s a lot of subject matter about estrangement and loss. It’s quite a sad album, but I’m really excited about it. … I got this sick choir on one of the songs. It was like I asked for the most ’50s, white-sounding choir, which is hilarious — the best guy in the choir to get that voice was actually a Black guy. A really Elvis-y “White Christmas” kind of vibe.

That’s such a departure for you! What inspired this vibe?

I think just finally finding the courage to release songs that I’ve had for a long time that were important to me. My first deal was with a boy band manager, so he really drilled into my head, like, “Oh, you’re useless after your teens.” He always used to say, “RedOne stole your teens. He stole your teens!”

I feel like that needs to be a song title. “RedOne Stole My Teens.”

Yes, just a spoken-word over intense jazz music.

Is this the same manager that wanted you to be a crooner with a bunch of other Frank Sinatras in a boy band?

No, a different guy. But me and the Struts were both signed to this guy. And he used to put us up in the same hotel, the Royal Garden in Kensington.

Wow. When we’re talking about rock artists that have played the long game, the Struts have also gone against the grain. I didn’t know you guys went so far back.

Yeah, me and the Struts were in this hotel together and I was in the band with Look Mum No Computer. We stayed in our room and they stayed in their room, and yet we used to get together, put a sock over the fire alarm, put all of the hand sanitizer from the minibar into a wine bucket, and then light it on fire and make this huge Olympic flame and sing around it kumbaya-style. And I was at the Struts’ first ever gig in Devon. I was so impressed with how good it was that I couldn’t even talk afterwards. And we went to a party at their house and Look Mum No Computer found out that my bass player had slept with [Struts guitarist] Adam [Slack’s] girlfriend [at the time], in Adam’s bed at the party. He was so angry at him that he punched the drywall and accidentally made a huge hole!

Oh my God. That’s so rock ‘n’ roll.

Yeah, they hated us. They hated us so much. That was our first introduction to these guys.

But Adam is engaged to Kelsy Karter now, so it all worked out for him. And obviously you were an innocent bystander to all that.

Yeah, I think they’ve forgiven us, more or less.

I think it’s interesting that you and the Struts started off around the same time, you’ve toured together, you’ve remained friends, and there have been a lot of career parallels — they’ve also had multiple record labels and multiple opportunities and some setbacks, but they’ve kept going. The fact that you both were repped by this boy band manager and you both ended up forging unique careers in rock, I think that’s awesome.

It’s funny, because they stayed a band after that. Mine split up after we lost our deal and I had no money. And I remember my manager being like, “Hey, the Struts are shooting a video today and they don’t have enough extras. Would you mind coming?” And I didn’t have a job, so I was like, “Yeah, sure, I’ll come down.”

Wait, was it the “Put Your Money on Me” video? Are you running behind them in the park?

Yes, I’m like this extra running obsessively after the Struts, just like, “God fucking damn it, these fucking guys got a career and I’m fucking selling cigarettes.”

That probably felt weirdly symbolic at the time.

Oh, it did. It was just a brutal three years of just absolutely getting my ass kicked by the universe.

But it all worked out.

Oh, if it hadn’t been for that time, I never would’ve written my first album. It completely changed my sound and gave me everything I have — probably my most authentic record, as a result of that intense shit-eating that I had to do.

Well, some people say the best art comes from dark times. So, what are you going to do now that you’re successful? How are you going to stay inspired?

I’m just going to get really into heroin, I think. That’ll do it.

No, don’t do that.

You don’t want me to be successful?

Well, I guess some artists have made their best music on drugs.

All my career’s missing is heroin. All the greats did it.

It’s not too late, I suppose. I still don’t think it’s a good idea. You don’t need to do drugs to keep doing what you’re doing.

Yeah, I just need to look like I’m on drugs, which I do.