On live performance: "From the creative point of view, live music is always different to what appears on a record because everything is spontaneous and you’re influenced as a performer by your audience. The negative aspect of live work is that the audience expects to be entertained, and not only that, the record company and the promoters expect you to be successful. But to me, the theatre is a meeting place where something unpredictable happens, not necessarily successful, maybe pleasant, maybe not. That’s how I think a concert should be, but in reality things have to be planned down to the last detail, you have to rehearse with other musicians so the scope for improvisation is lessened, and these things prevent a concert from being a truly spontaneous affair. In a way, this reality makes me less keen to do concerts, but in essence I do like playing. I enjoy the risk".

Dad used to say it’s [live recording] the backbone for any musical endeavour. And I’ve realised that with time. So most often, my re-recordings are live. Technology does enhance music, but the warmth of a live orchestra is incomparable. Fans wrote to me after ‘Oru Devadai…’ (“Vaamanan”) saying the score had a divine quality. That’s because it was done live. Besides, I’m also conscious of the employment problem that technology-driven music creates.

I consider myself a performance artist more than a recording artist. The stage is where I feel the most comfortable in expressing who I am, where I am, discovering things about myself. It's more therapy than it is a job. Recording is like perfecting a moment, where performing live is just creating a moment. And I love the feeling of creating that thing that just disappears and evaporates into time. You have it on your phone or video but for me, it's over after the moment. And there's something really beautiful about being able to just let go of something after you create it.

When you give a performance, whether on record or on film, you want to be able to judge what you've done, to measure yourself and try to improve. You can't do that in an untaped or unrecorded performance.

It is a fallacy that one can capture the moment through audio recording – that the recording can really represent that 'creative process'. We all know that the moment is gone forever, that the recording can never reproduce all the specifics of the situation, the room, the feeling of the players, their history and backgrounds, the conditions, reasons and interests for producing such a recording.

The greatest benefit was performing live

Going in and out of a song, you know you might just be good enough to improvise a little bit when you’re playing live when you haven’t recorded a song, but then you get a chord and you say, oh, that little bit that I’m playing there, that doesn’t fit quite right, you know, or there’s something missing in that chord. It’s like putting a microscope on the song, you know, and polishing it to the way that you wanted, that’s what I think. I think things like … there was one chord this time, and we’re using good guitars, but nothing sounded right. Slightly out of tune. As you move from the top of the neck to the bottom of the neck, you’d never have noticed it when you were playing live, but when you’re recording it it becomes so so intricate that I think it’s a great way to get into the song

Now we all know that new recordings carry Danger signs all over them. Danger: fantastic sound can subvert your judgement. Danger: artist’s names and reputations can affect the way we listen. Danger: a new recording has not had time to win you over—it may be unfair to compare it to one you have known for 20 years. [...] Danger: things that irritate now may endear themselves to us in time. Danger: there was only one Stokowski.

Sound is half the experience of seeing a film. That's why I have been bothered by the poor sound re-production in many theaters and most homes.

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.

It’s so immediate. It’s very exciting. The audience is there so there’s no retake. There’s no stopping and no chance to redo. You feel the audience and their response to what you’re doing. You get the energy from the audience that you don’t get in a film. Live theater is fluid. You start at the top and go all the way through. You have a seamless feeling and it’s different each night, whether it’s a long or short run. Different things happen each night. There’s a different nuance with the people you act with in each performance. It may be very subtle and very slight and the audience may not catch it, but you do.

In Kyuss and Queens, we allow people to tape our shows, whether it's audio, video or both. You're doing that tonight, but you're no different than someone who buys the ticket. Because the exchanging of music is what should happen. It's one of the only things I like about The Grateful Dead, it's "do you want a tape from '67 on June 2nd? You can get one". I probably wouldn't like the music on the tape, but it's still possible. My problem is that people sell our live shows for too much money. They should be the cost of the video and shipping. And in turn, MP3 take a record that I've spent money and time and put so much love into, take it, and just give it away. But they make the money. MP3 and Napster, they make tons of money, but they say "Oh, it's about free exchange!", but that just sounds like just another jack-off thief in the dark, that doesn't have guts enough to admit what they're doing. I had someone say something interesting to me in Canada, "Well, would you rather have the label fuck you over, or the fans fuck you over?". And I just said, "Neither!". And when it gets posed to me in such a way I sit there and think, "You know, what am I doing? Maybe I should skip through the countryside, playing flute (?)". Because MP3 certainly is like [stabbing sound and motion]. If you're an unsigned band, then it really helps, but then, you know? I don't wanna censor anyone, and I'm no one's daddy, I'm not going to monitor the internet, but I think there's a moral side to it too; I don't steal from you, you don't steal from me. Seems fair, you know?

An audience is just a mirror of what's happening on stage, and if what's happening on stage has love in it—real feeling and conviction and strength and purity—then we are truly reflecting them, because it is their own nature that is coming back. Everything is. The music is. For me, the only barriers in music are the barriers in the musician and in the equipment he has to use. If a musician has no barriers within himself, then there are no barriers within his music. His only battle is with the problems of expressing his true nature against the difficulties of the real world—the limits of his amplifiers and his guitar or his piano or whatever, the limits the outer world places upon the natural perfection of the spirit.

A live concert to me is exciting because of all the electricity that is generated in the crowd and on stage. It's my favorite part of the business — live concerts.