My dad is from Queens. I remember visiting as a kid. My grandparents grew up here. All the actors I respected were coming out of here. All the hip-hop I was listening to - Beastie Boys, A Tribe Called Quest, Biggie, Wu Tang - was coming out of New York. I'm just into it.

I don't think of my music in terms of a career. I just want to get it out there and do it. I'm not manipulating my sound to be like anybody or trying to write to sound like anybody else.

The thing about New York is it's like London: you want to go to the boutique places. You can go to the big department stores - Barney's, Bloomingdales and all that stuff - but I like the little stores.

I've always gone back and forth between acting and music, but for music I'm not trying to be a pop star - I just like to do it.

Grief is a bit of a journey, and it is evolving all the time but I am very functional.

Death is the beginning of something.

For 'Death Magnetic,' I used what I always use, which is my standard touring rack, which is filled with some Boogie stuff and a Marshall that I've had forever.

When I was a kid, I had a period in my life when I was eight or nine when I was so scared of dying that I wouldn't go out of our house for a whole year. I refused to step out of the door because I thought something would happen. I had all these compulsive thoughts or whatever, and my head was really messed up.