I want to close with a big moment of triumph for you. I’m sure you remember MTV’s 25 Lame.

No. I’m not familiar with that at all. What was this?

I’m sorry. I’m going to bring up bad news from like 20 years ago. They did the “25 lamest videos,” and “After the Rain” was included. It had comedians like Jon Stewart, and Janeane Garofalo, doing commentary.

Oooh yeah, the postmodern, I’m so cool, and I’m so dark. Yeah, OK, that’s fine.

‘90s nostalgia is now at an all-time high, and having back to back Top 10 singles at the holidays, and consistently being on the road, how good does it feel to have the last laugh?

You know what … one of the first questions you asked … was there a particular moment when you felt the high, when you felt like this was it? Here’s the moment for me: I wrote the video for “After the Rain” two days before we filmed it. We already had a No. 1 with “Love and Affection,” and we were trying to go out on tour, so you had a management company saying, “You gotta do a video that shows you guys playing live, because we gotta sell tickets,” but we had no idea what the video for “After the Rain’ was gonna be.

Two days before shooting the video I had a dream that was like an acid trip. The entire video you see for “After the Rain,” from the concept stuff in the beginning, all the way through the end, literally came to me in a dream two days before.

We submitted it to the committee that was deciding which videos went on MTV.

I called our manager, and he said, “You’re not gonna believe this, they rejected the video. They want you to pull all of the spiritual references out of there. They want you to cut all the concept off, all that stuff. All they want is the performance part of it.” I said, “I want you to call them back and make a deal …”

Basically, what they did was agree to broadcast the video, as is, at two or three o’clock in the morning, one time.

That gamble worked out pretty well for you.

It was the most requested video for four weeks straight, and when they added the video they added it exactly the way we shot it.

That was the moment. That was it. That was the moment that was the high for me.

I love the fact that I get to make music. I love the fact that I get to make music with my brother, and I love the fact that it’s that exact video, cut exactly like it was, that I got letters from. One in particular was really cool.

It was about a month ago, I had a woman come up to us in an autograph line, and she had three kids. She handed me a letter she had written, and not sent, back in the day. She said she was sitting there, and at the time she was in junior high, had a horrible childhood, parents fighting, all that kind of stuff, and she had a bottle full of pills in front of her, and her dad’s .357 magnum in her lap, and she was about to take herself out.

Kids don’t know what permanent is. She was 14 years old, and she was about to do one of those, “They’re gonna miss me when I’m gone,” kind of things. Then the video for “After the Rain” came on, with the horrible parents, and the kid being pulled into a poster, and all that kind of stuff. She instead picked up the phone and called her grandmother, who got her some help, and I got to meet her kids.

That’s a helluva story.

It’s the truth.

I’m just gonna sum up by saying the only thing I ever wanted to do in my entire life was to make music, and I’m getting to do that still. Knocking on 50 I’m still making vital music, I’m still writing songs, I’m still touring, and meeting people, and hopefully making a difference, and that’s all I ever wanted to do. I’m just like the most grateful guy out there.

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