I've had the luxury of owning my own studio, 24 analogue, 48 digital, endless effects, endless hardcore gear, that I don't have to rent, I don't get stuck with the bills, it's all mine.
A studio is like a meditation room where music is created. And a live performance is the place where the creation of the studio is taken ahead. I love both.
The main thing in measuring integrity is someone's motive and intent, not how many records they sell. Our intent in Ministry was never to be big. We just wanted to make enough money to live and to buy a studio, which we have done in Austin.
Social media is a double-edged sword. I've gotten in trouble for announcing, too soon, something that the network or the studio wanted to do, and it steals some of the thunder, so to speak.
In the 1960s when the recording studio suddenly really took off as a tool, it was the kids from art school who knew how to use it, not the kids from music school. Music students were all stuck in the notion of music as performance, ephemeral. Whereas for art students, music as painting? They knew how to do that.
I enjoy the collaboration. I always envied people in bands who got to have that interaction. I've done so many albums where I've been in the studio for 14 hours a day for six months just trying to come up with things on my own. It's a nice change helping other people with their music and not being all about what I'm trying to do myself.
The first session I did with the Stones was an accident. I just happened to be wandering down the hallway of the same studio.
I know, for me, that I have always been very conscious of how I dress when I go to the studio, I'm very conscious of my body language when I'm working - a lot of times, I'm the only female in the room. It's a very male-dominated profession. I'm always around guys. Guys are going to try you all day, and they're going to flirt all day.
'The Golden Compass' became a bad experience because the studio didn't have faith in the strength of the ideas of the novel, which is ironic because it's one of the greatest fantasy novels ever written, if not the greatest, and they took the religion out of it and tried to turn it into a popcorn movie.
After I left the Pumpkins, I went home and just sat around. I have a studio in my basement, and I found myself writing all these songs, just taking advantage of the relaxed situation. I wrote about 30 songs in about 30 days.