[T]here is this question that goes on with celebrities, especially people in the music industry, which I think are different in a way than actors and so forth: What is the real person? What is the person behind the mask and all that sort of stuff? And I’ve always had trouble with this question because I don’t really think there is anything behind the mask. I don’t think there is anything of any substance behind the mask except a kind of withered, etiolated memory of something we may have been when we were younger. I think there’s a desperation that comes with a lot of people in the entertainment business, especially in the music business, or wanting to become something different than you were when you were a child, to become something that you perceive as a grander thing. And I think you give over your life to that wish, you know, for better or for worse.
[…] There is only one mask, and eventually that mask kind of calcifies itself onto the face and you can’t take it off anymore, and you just become that thing. This is all sounding a bit bleak, but actually it’s quite a wonderful thing as well.