[jico.]

What's it like to now play stuff you may have completely forgotten? Are you amazed at what you came up with, or aghast at how primitive you were?
Both. I mean, listening to the [Daydream Nation] master tapes, I was amazed at how crude my guitar takes were. Especially "Rain King," which I had to decode -- like, "What the fuck tuning was that and where were my fingers on the guitar?" Because it sounded like I was playing rotten guitar strings on a piece of wood. And then it would break into this kind of hard-rock riff. But it was just so spastic all through the song. And "The Sprawl" and " 'Cross the Breeze" were two songs that we hadn't really played since those days. I had to really listen closely to them to figure out what the tunings were. It was just really weird, finding old notations in scrapbooks and on pieces of paper, like these ancient texts. It sounds great, but when you listen to just one element of it, like my guitar, it sounds like I don't know how to play, like I'm playing with gloves on. I would never accept a guitar take like that today. And it sounds crappy, too, the way it's recorded.
You mentioned earlier that you try to move on, artistically. But isn't playing Daydream Nation live rather nostalgic?
I didn't really want to do it at first. It took a lot of influence for me to do it. I thought it would be taking up too much time from us doing something new and progressive. And I really don't like the idea, kind of like the Beatlemania thing. I had more anxiety and appre*hension about learning the old songs, which was kind of a chore. But then I started getting really into figuring them out, and where I was as a guitar player and as a band person in 1988, in that scene. And it was kind of inspiring, and it brought back this groundedness in this music existing at a point when we didn't have any responsibilities, like parenthood -- we were really on the loose. We were just trying to get out of the dishwashing business, and maybe be able to stay in the van all the time and pay bills that way, if we could. There's a certain glory in that innocence, and that feeling was there when we were reconstructing this music again.
What made you say yes?
Well, it was partly Barry Hogan, who promotes [the festivals] All Tomorrow's Parties. He started doing an event called "Don't Look Back" in London. He had the Stooges do Fun House. He really wanted us to do Daydream Nation, and I was balking. But I do work with Barry -- I curated a few of his ATPs -- and we decided to do it. It seemed like it could be fun, if we didn't do too many of them. As soon as we did the London one, though, our European booking agent told us, "If you come over in the summer, I can get you some festival gigs," which is always how you make a little money in the summer, to get you through your year. And he said, "Some of these festivals found out that you're doing Daydream Nation in London. And they'll give you an extra few thousand bucks if you do Daydream Nation." And we were like, "Well, we don't really want to do it at a festival." Because a festival audience is a bunch of drunken people coming out and hearing these truncated sets by these bands, one after the other, and there's no soundcheck. Usually, it's on the precipice of being a disaster. Something like Daydream Nation might not work in a setting like that. But we did some festivals; our first show was in Barcelona, and it worked. I feel conflicted, because this is not us now; this is us doing this thing. But then we come out for an encore and do a large chunk of new material, from Rather Ripped, and all of a sudden, it's pogo city.

There's this trend of bands playing their whole album -- even Queensrÿche is doing Operation: Mindcrime and its sequel. Why is this happening now?
It seems like it's a trend, but there's a lot of history that's gone by since, say, 1980 -- there's almost 30 years there. It's a way of people appreciating that trajectory of the music scene. In a way, it's more interesting than a reunion tour. The Pixies reunion was a real success, and Dinosaur Jr. seems like a big success, and both those bands play as good as they ever did. Mission of Burma blew my mind when they came back. But a band like us never did break up. Which was to our own [detriment]. What would have happened if we did break up after Daydream Nation -- or even after Dirty -- and had gotten back together two years ago? You wouldn't be interviewing me here. You'd be interviewing me at the Chateau Marmont as I'm waiting for my limousine. We probably would have made so much money. That was our biggest career faux pas: not breaking up.