Back then, we could drive a mile from home and there was nothing. Now it's grown in every direction and is populated and modernized. I guess I have mixed feelings about it, but I'm not someone that thinks everything should stop growing.

When I did the record, I was coming off a time when my contract had been sold and the music industry had changed a lot. I didn't understand how to make records for big labels. I was waiting for a new kind of record label to emerge.

When I go to Japan and do shows I play for 1,000 to 1,500 people. I like a lot about Japan. Their popular culture and mass commercialization appeals to me.

My family lives there, so I come back sometimes between shows for a couple days. I get back a couple times a year. When I was 30 to 34 I was weirded out when I came back - you know, how your past gets away from you. It's grown so much.

The openness of rural Nebraska certainly influenced me. That openness, in a way, fosters the imagination. But growing up, Lincoln wasn't a small town. It was a college town. It had record stores and was a liberal place.

He wanted to play accordion on something of mine and I said you can play accordion, but I want you to play piano and organ on some stuff. He came over a couple times a week for two weeks and gave me therapy as to whether I should do The Thorns or not.

Girlfriend and 100 Percent Fun were my two peeks, around '92 and '96. The reality is that the times I had the most media success, sold lots of records and played bigger shows, I had the least control of my own life.

It wasn't so much that I had to leave to make it in the music business as I was curious to be out on my own and sort of explore. I never felt that where I was ever influenced my songwriting.

He helped make Living Things even more crazy than I wanted it to be. He added old-fashioned piano and classical folk music - that weird otherworldly vibe - all these elements got onto the record.

First off, I don't want anyone to think I'm this huge thing in Japan. Every group from here that's made any records over any length of time - even indie bands - have a Cheap Trick effect in Japan.

I had no allusions of radio success. I just loved being in studios. I was having fun and in that sense I now feel a lot like I did when I did that record.

Back then, we could drive a mile from home and there was nothing. Now it's grown in every direction and is populated and modernized. I guess I have mixed feelings about it, but I'm not someone that thinks everything should stop growing.

More labels should be like that. Instead of putting these records out myself, I should have just signed with them, but they probably don't like my music (laughs).

I have more perspective now, and am happier now. It's not that I don't want success, but I now know I can have success at a lower level and make much more money doing it by myself. I make $6 or $7 bucks a record vs. nothing off those other records.

They said, 'If we put you in first class with Brian, will you do it?' So I flew after not having flown in eight years. If there's one person who doesn't like flying as much as me, it's Brian.

I figured if the plane goes down, I'll go with a great genius and will always have my name connected with his.

There are things that I value now that I didn't when I first went over there, like Zen Buddhism, which has become part of my life over the last couple years.

It became a question of do I want to be on a label where it could take three years to put out a record instead of putting out three records over the same period of time on my own.

So it helped me to just let go of all my tensions and feelings about that world and say 'OK, this is for my fans in Japan. They'll be nice and get into it and have fun.' And it was the first record I made at my home studio.

You know that they're not just into it for the moment, they really care about it and value it over time.

I wanted Kimi to be a Japanese record with a Japanese title. I wanted it to be for them. They appreciate things on a different level, and take their art very seriously - that's special if you're an artist.

I went to a rare live Van Dyke show and met him there. And then he came to a show of mine and we spoke back stage. The third time was at Brian Wilson's birthday party.

The summer of 2002 at the Wilson birthday party I met Van Dyke again and I made plans to have dinner with him.

Creativity is much better when it's free. Someone can take it and sell it if that's what it needs, and from that standpoint, you have to have a label. If you could make your music and just give it away and somehow make a living - that would be the best scenario.

I want to thank all the fans for their support over the years. Keep supporting the Knicks, we're moving in the right direction here and we will be exciting to watch and competing against the best in the NBA. Come back to the Garden for those exciting games.

Then I decided I couldn't just crawl in the corner and die, so I started putting pen to paper and wrote some songs. I had no idea what for or who I was going to work with. I tried to find my way and direction.

The laws were not made so much for the direction of good men, as to circumscribe the bad.

The mind moves in the direction of our currently dominant thoughts.

Life is an operation which is done in a forward direction. One lives toward the future, because to live consists inexorably in doing, in each individual life making itself.

On one hand, to be able to go from one direction in the sky to study such an object to another direction to study another object, and on the other hand to be able to maintain accurately the position in space.

The more one listens to ordinary conversations the more apparent it becomes that the reasoning faculties of the brain take little part in the direction of the vocal organs.

Backward is just not a natural direction for Americans to look - historical ignorance remains a national characteristic.

I have thought about Happy Days made into a movie. As far as the original cast not being a part of it, wow, I don't know who could be who!I just don't see it going in that direction. I can see the original cast doing the movie very easily though.

But I try not to become preoccupied with that because with whatever direction I follow, with whatever advice I've followed or not followed, It's landed me in New York, in a very beautiful hotel, talking to people about something that I love. So I ain't that far off.

No one could understand the bond between me and my brother. I struggled to understand the forces that drove his soul in one direction and mine in another.

I am always more interested in performance and character depiction, and my direction says as much.

You've got to think about big things while you're doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.

People, like sheep, tend to follow a leader - occasionally in the right direction.

The general knowledge of time on the island depends, curiously enough, on the direction of the wind.

I didn't know Albert back then - I just learned to play that way. He and I were the only guys that played left-handed. Then left-handed people came from every direction.

As the unity of the modern world becomes increasingly a technological rather than a social affair, the techniques of the arts provide the most valuable means of insight into the real direction of our own collective purposes.

In group lesson number six I think we learned how to turn backwards and then just kind of wiggle. That wasn't really skating backward, but I guess I was going in the right direction.

I think it was probably down to the fact that we weren't together personally as a band. We weren't pulling in the same direction. I always feel if you're having a good time in the studio it actually comes across on the tape and that was a bit of a miserable album for us.

It takes little talent to see what lies under one's nose, a good deal to know in what direction to point that organ.

I mean, George Bush is a man of prayer. He talks to the lord. He tries to get his direction from the lord.

Children in a family are like flowers in a bouquet: there's always one determined to face in an opposite direction from the way the arranger desires.

Give immediate instruction to all your posts in said territory, under your direction, at no time and on no pretence to hoist, or suffer be hoisted, the English flag.

If you cry 'forward', you must without fail make plain in what direction to go.

There are a lot of times that if a detail in a scene or a beat, feels unnatural, they'll allow me to explore another direction to go until we're all comfortable with what we are doing.