You've said that you went at these songs with a "female approach," can you elaborate on what you mean by that term?

Um, yeah. For me, a feminine approach is not something that is limited to women, it is just attention to detail, no real beer-commercial groove, and often no solidity at all, not even in real time, sporadic song patterns, songs that shoot off in all different directions. And I find men to be really good at that, because they don't block their, I guess, feminine side when it comes to art. It is supposed to be there. Women block their feminine side everywhere because they've been told that it is icky and weepy. And yet if they have the opportunity to not think for a while, they can be very graceful. You should be balanced. You shouldn't feel only masculine or feminine. You should have song patterns that don't sound like classic rock. Right now we are very out of balance because the pop format is very masculine, it is very predictable, and any feminine pattern is seen as a deviation. So we're all a bunch of deviants! (laughs)

That is interesting. Because often all-female bands songs are very masculine, I suppose because they are in the music business.

Well I think those are the ones we pay attention to. But I think there are a lot of women and a lot of men who are not doing that and they are silenced because they have no place in the music business. We aren't about to embrace any deviation, certainly not a feminine one. So the judgment, the evaluation we hold up for them is, "How much like a man can you be?" (laughs) "Look, they do it really well, almost as good as a man!" No real woman holds that up as an evaluation of herself, so why do it in music?

These days the mainstream media would have people believe that the major labels have never been so open minded to new things. Would you say that is the case?

Nirvana did a lot for alternative music. We've been called alternative ever since we began, and then it meant alternative to real music or alternative to music that sells. That said, we didn't mind because the bands we grew up listening to were invisible to the music business. We didn't expect to hear the Minutemen on the radio. We didn't expect X to be embraced by grown-ups or 13 year olds. So we thought, "We'd like to do this as our job." And we've never really come away from that feeling. Nirvana let people in the industry know that the sound of alternative music is marketable. So there are some good bands that have been embraced by that sound, and there are some bad bands with that sound that have been embraced by the music business. Anything trendy is not going to be very substance oriented anyway. Luckily for everyone on the planet, Nirvana was a great band.

Does having children make it hard for you on the road. Do they come along with you?

I've always had Dylan since we made our first record. It was harder when I couldn't afford a nanny. But I have a baby that goes on the road with us now, and Dylan is eight years old and is in school. So I know what it is like to leave them behind and I know what it is like to bring them along. And neither one is easy. But we are very lucky, we are not still traveling in a van and sleeping on floors!