I am going to rant now:
I think my favorite question every college radio DJ asked was "how do you guys prepare for a show?"
it got old staring blankly for minute and telling them we did what we always do, tune up, plug in, turn on and play music (I usually like to get sushi before a show or during studio sessions because it doesn't bloat you up and its tasty, but I also like to get sushi before doing anything physical that's no good on an empty stomach)... after awhile we would come up with some really outrageous answers. Our singer once said she liked to eat nothing but raw meat all week (she's a vegan) and me and the bassist told one girl we liked to get drunk and fight the undead (the bassist doesn't drink and I had given it up for awhile back then).
It just felt utterly ridiculous. Allof it. How do YOU get ready for work every day and why should I care? Playing music is what we do. Its fun but its also a job. Writing songs and performing is mostly about craft and routine. But that's not what Joe Listener wants to hear. There's too much music mythology glamorizing the process for him to buy that. Its the reason Van Gogh is such a huge name in painting. There were other early expressionists painting like that independently at the time, but they didn't cut their ears off or commit suicide. The myth sells. I was always a Van Gogh guy as a kid because I bought the myth, but as I learned more about his life I realized he did his best work when there was no drama in his world. I'm sure he ahd that pent up angst as a source of inspiration to some extent, but the truth was he painted because he was driven to paint independent of the other facets of his personality and musicians make music for the same reason. People's deep, dark souls are more hype than reality. Its good press in an industry that markets coolness. Rock music, but pretty much all pop music these days, is really infected with a huge dose of Wertherism (read Goethe, of course he meant that book as a satire, but no one read it that way).
And as far as song meaning goes, I find that between inspiration and completion a song takes on a life of its own that obscures and even negates the original meaning and often changes the original mood I was trying to set to varying degrees. This is doubly true when a band gets collaborating. When I have tried to share a feeling or experience that's particularly potent in song form, the song is as much as I want to invite strangers in for. If I wanted to tell you a detailed story I would write my memoir. Writing personal songs is more about the catharsis than a quest for empathy and in the end I will always opt to write something more universal that is fun to listen to than to express my experiences with precision for both artistic and selfish reasons.
That unspoken communal catharsis is what makes rock 'n roll appealing to musicians and listeners. Reading your own meaning into a song is what makes it resonate with you. Knowing too much about the lyrics will strip its power. There's such an element of put-on in rock music and trying to "make it" taught me (and I think most of my bandmates) that you have to have a certain pretentious temperament that I just do not have. I can't play the part with a straight face. My sense of whimsy gets me every time as it does most people. After awhile all I could think every day was "oh my god, this is the dumbest thing I could be doing, I can't even pretend I am taking it seriously! Might as well let 'em all know we are having fun."
edit: this is not a shot at the OP, just ranting at the music biz and rock music fans and press in general
