"It was great. You know, Ronnie Montrose played really, really good on that song. I'm really impressed with that. Denny Carmassi is one of the great rock drummers of all time. That's that Led Zeppelin thing in this album, that's probably what you hear is that Denny man playing that big (bleep) bass sound. He's got a great foot on him. And Bootsy Collins, what an experience. On ‘Would You Do It For Free?' I wrote that song on bass, and Bootsy . . . there was a toss up in my head of who I would ask to play on it, whether it would be Flea or Bootsy, because they're the two baddest bass players I know. And a friend of mine says, ‘Man, you should get the grand daddy of funk. Get Bootsy to play.' And I go, ‘Do you know Bootsy?' He goes, ‘Yeah,' and I said ‘bull-(bleep).' So he grabbed the telephone and called him up. That was a great experience, hearing a guy that was that much of a master on his instrument. It's like Eddie on guitar, you know, Eddie's a master of that guitar, and Bootsy's a master of the bass. We cut that song — Denny Carmassi, Bootsy on bass, and me on guitar, and it was just rippin', man. I mean, it was almost like we didn't even have to do any of the overdubs. We had the song just like that. Oh, and Mickey Hart, my new-found best friend in the world, my mentor, my hero, man, I love this guy. He's got more energy and enthusiasm than any human being I've ever met in my life. If I play him a riff — I could just be sitting around on the guitar and play one lick, and he'll go, ‘hey! Do that again! If you play that and I play the beat like this to it, see whatcha got?' And I'd go, Whoa! No (bleep)! I never would've thought of it like that. That's just a blues lick.' Like ‘Marching to Mars,' I'm just playing a ‘School's Out' blues, you know, Alice Cooper sound type lick. That's just an old blues lick, and this guy heard this kind of a beat behind it, and next thing you know, you've got this almost high tech drum beat behind this blues lick. I just can't believe it, the guy's just so energetic and enthusiastic, that he just pulls something outta nothing. There's a song called ‘Ether,' and it's only on the Japanese version, I think. It's just a little one minute instrumental, I think. But I wrote that about Mickey, how out of thin air, this guy can just pull something out. He's really amazing."

How has being a father changed our outlook?

"Well, I've been a father, but being a new father of a baby girl — my first baby girl, I've got two sons — I'm tellin' ya, the best way I could sum it up is that moment when your baby is born . . . everyone in life is looking for a miracle. You know, you want to see somebody fly? You want to see someone walk on water? You want to think someone can just do something that no one else can — to perform a miracle. But when you see that baby come out, and you realize it was inside of its mother for all that time, it grew, you know, and now you cut the cord and it takes its first breath, that's like a whole different dimension. And when you see that, you realize that (it) is truly a miracle. And that blows your mind so bad that you kind of become enlightened. It changes your life. I think it does; it did me again. It just enlightened me to the fact that life is a miracle. The fact that I'm sitting here talking to you on the telephone is a miracle. It makes you a little more enlightened to where everything you see around you, you take a little more seriously, and all of a sudden you feel like you're responsible for this baby, and you're so in love with this baby, the fact that you would take a bullet for this baby, and not even complain. You know, save this baby's life? Take mine right now! And when you start thinking like that, you realize that's the true meaning of love, and that's what love is. It's unconditional. You don't take love from someone. That's what love is all about. I mean, when you give love, more flows through you, and it becomes a special, special thing. And when you start living your life like that, about giving and not taking, and about caring, and being unselfish and not even thinking of yourself, you'd be amazed how beautiful life is. And that's how it changed my life."

I can definitely concur with that. About a year ago, we had our first child. It was a baby girl, we had the birth at home and I caught the baby . . .

"Oh come on, then you know exactly what I'm talking about! You know, you love that baby. When's her birthday?"

February 25th.

"Oh yeah, Kama's is April 1st. So the song, when I wrote the song ‘Kama,' you know, that's my baby's name, and it means ‘love' in Sanskrit, the original written language. And that's supposed to be the true way to say the word ‘love,' like you, know, ‘love' is the American version, or ‘amore,' and all these things, but you know, Kama is the true meaning, as in Kama Sutra, which is ‘the art of love,' and the art of lovemaking (laughter). I think it's been turned into that, but I think Kama Sutra actually means the ‘art of love.' So Kama comes from that. And that song, when I wrote that song, I just closed my eyes, and I just wrote about exactly what happened. You should listen to that song and think about the birth of your baby, and about naming it, and about what you're feeling. That song will take your (bleep) South. If you don't get choked up when you know what that song's about, then you'll have to convince me that you had a baby."

We named our daughter Kaela.

"Wow, that's totally similar. Does it mean something?"

No, we just took a name from the Bible, and kind of adapted it to the spelling we wanted.