Pop musicians live in the world of symbology. You live and die by the symbol in many ways. You serve at the behest of your audience's imagination. It's a complicated relationship. So you're asking people to welcome the complexity in the interest of fuller and more honest communication.

The audience and the artist are valuable to one another as long as you can look out there and see yourself, and they look back and see themselves. That's asking quite a bit, but that is what happens. When that bond is broken, by your own individual beliefs, personal thoughts or personal actions, it can make people angry. As simple as that. You're asking for a broader, more complicated relationship with the members of your audience than possibly you've had in the past.

What do you stand to lose or gain from this as an artist?

As an artist and a citizen, you're gaining a chance to take part in moving the country in the direction of its deepest ideals. Artists are always speaking to people's freedoms. The shout for freedom and its implications was implicit in rock 'n' roll from its inception. Freedom can only find its deepest meaning within a community of purpose. So as an individual I'm getting to take a small part in that process.

As an artist, I'd like to have a broader understanding with all the different segments of my audience and have a deeper experience when we come out and play for people. I think that's something that could be gained, and that's something worth doing. I tend to think a relatively small amount of people might get turned off by it, 'cause I've tried to do this as thoughtfully as possible, and because any relationship worth something can take some rough-and-tumble. We'll see.

This has obviously been on your mind for a while. How did you come to this decision?

I knew after we invaded Iraq that I was going to be involved in the election. It made me angry. We started to talk about it onstage. I take my three minutes a night for what I call my public-service announcement. We talked about it almost every night on our summer tour.

I felt we had been misled. I felt they had been fundamentally dishonest and had frightened and manipulated the American people into war. And as the saying goes, "The first casualty of war is truth." I felt that the Bush doctrine of preemption was dangerous foreign policy. I don't think it has made America safer.

Look at what is going on now: We are quickly closing in on what looks an awful lot like the Vietnamization of the Iraq war. John McCain is saying we could be there for 10 or 20 years, and John Kerry says four years. How many of our best young people are going to die between now and that time, and what exactly for? Initially I thought I was going to take my acoustic guitar and play in some theaters, find some organizations to work for and do what I could. I was going to lend my voice for a change in the administration and a change in the direction of the country.

Sitting on the sidelines would be a betrayal of the ideas I'd written about for a long time. Not getting involved, just sort of maintaining my silence or being coy about it in some way, just wasn't going to work this time out. I felt that it was a very clear historical moment.

So there wasn't a moment of doubt in your mind about what the right thing to do was?

It was something that gestated over a period of time, and as events unfolded and the election got closer, it became clearer. I don't want to watch the country devolve into an oligarchy, watch the division of wealth increase and see another million people beneath the poverty line this year. These are all things that have been the subtext of so much of my music, and to see the country move so quickly to the right, so much further to the right than what the president campaigned on -- these are the things that removed whatever doubt I may have had about getting involved.

Are you expecting to have your motives severely criticized?

That's just a part of what happens. You understand you're going to be attacked in different ways. That just comes with it. That wasn't any concern.

Do you think there is a climate of trying to intimidate artists and creative people?

People are always trying to shut up the people they don't agree with -- through any means necessary, usually. There certainly was an attempt to intimidate the Dixie Chicks. What happened to them was a result of war fever -- simple as that, war fever. They've handled it incredibly. They are very smart, tough women, and they did not back down. But it's one of those sad paradoxes that in theory we're fighting for freedom, and the first thing people are willing to throw out is freedom of speech at home and castigate anybody who is coming from a different point of view.

A lot of people think that you have no right as an artist to comment on this or play a role in politics.

I don't know if a lot of people think that. It is something that is said. It's sort of part of the "Punch and Judy" show that goes on when people disagree with what you're saying.

How much do you follow this election?

I think that Senator Kerry has long played it close to the vest, and that's his style. However, the presidency is like the heavyweight championship: They don't give it to you, you have to take it. He has a slow, deliberate style that may not make for an electrifying campaigner, but it may make for a very good president. But, of course, you have to get there.

One of the most disturbing aspects of this election is that the machinery for taking something that is a lie and making it feel true, or taking something that is true and making it feel like a lie -- the selling machinery has become very powerful. Senator Kerry has to make people pay attention to the man behind the curtain. He has to take the risk and rip the veil off the administration's deceptions. They are a hall of mirrors and a house of cards.

For Senator Kerry, the good news is he has the facts on his side. The bad news is that often in the current climate it can feel like that doesn't matter, and he has to make it matter.

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