Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
And if you don't believe the sun will rise, stand alone and greet the coming night in the last remaining light.
Oftentimes, especially in the context of an acoustic song, I'm motivated to write by some amount of melancholy.
In the United States, workouts tend to focus on body image and how you look. For me, it's really all about the brain.
My history of singing has always probably been closer to a David Bowie approach than, for example, an AC/DC approach.
I never wrote music or arranged songs or lyrics when I was under the influence of anything but coffee. That's not gone away.
'Superunknown' was one of the most dramatic shifts in what we were doing musically. I don't think I realized it at the time.
If I had a musical identity that was definable then it would be time to get into painting or something else. Race car driving.
I feel like you're not a real musician or entertainer if you can't go into a room, pick up an instrument and entertain people.
What formed me as a musician, a songwriter, the sound and personality of my band, a whole lot of that happened well before 1991.
I prefer not to use any machines. I focus a lot on cardio, which is what I do when I'm on stage. I also am into isometric workouts.
The reason there's no modern-day Shakespeare is because he didn't have anything to do except sit in a room with a candle and think.
I play Texas Hold'em on my Blackberry. I have amassed a fortune on that. I have almost 30 million dollars from playing. It is unreal.
I think the concept of commercials, for example, I have had offers to do songs in different commercials, and it is not what I have liked.
The sense of anger I had when I was younger is something I thought would never go away. Over time, it's something you get almost bored with.
I've seen a lot of Pearl Jam shows, and the only reaction I've ever seen is the audience being completely supportive and loving every moment.
What do you think Jesus would twitter, 'Let he who is without sin cast the first stone' or 'Has anyone seen Judas? He was here a minute ago.'
There was this moment when we made 'Superunknown': the Seattle music scene had suddenly ended up on an international stage with huge success.
I remember hearing songs from the Mother Love Bone album, and hearing Alice in Chains, and feeling like this is more than just a fad or moment.
I think it's important for fans to know that but if I'm doing something that inspires me musically then I think it will inspire someone else too.
When you see a country take care of its people regardless of class, or how much money they make, or what color they are, that's pretty inspiring.
A true musician, like Johnny Cash, should be able to walk into a room with nothing but an instrument and capture people's attention for two hours.
When I met my wife Vicky's family, I had to go out of my way to convince them, to show them, that I wasn't anything like their idea of a musician.
I rejected most of the folk I was exposed to in the Seventies. I came around later to Tom Waits, some parts of Jim Croce, and a lot of Cat Stevens.
There was about two years where I was more or less agoraphobic and didn't deal with anybody, didn't talk to anybody, didn't have any friends at all.
'Black Hole Sun' was written in a car when I was driving home from the studio one night. Pretty much everything that you hear was written in my head.
Most frontmen are not born hams like David Lee Roth. We're more like Joey Ramone: awkward geeks who somehow find our place in the world on the stage.
If you're an American kid, you can't help but be influenced by Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and the Rolling Stones because they're always on the radio.
As a child, I was this record collector/listener that would sit in a room and listen to the entire Beatles catalog alone, over and over and over again.
I'm sure I could start a band tomorrow that would have different influences and would want to do something completely different than anything I've done.
I have a hard time narrowing things down to ten or 12 songs. If I walk off stage in anything less than two hours, it just feels strange. It feels early.
There's something about losing friends, particularly young people, where it's not something that you get over. I don't believe there's a healing process.
Audioslave was something that I felt had become a career decision. It became three albums over a period of years touring with a specific group of people.
The first time I ever went to Hawaii, I was listening to island music, thinking, 'I could've been born here, and I'm pretty sure I would never play that.'
Friends of mine that are from here or that have spent time here have told me about Israel and how warm the people are and that I should someday come here.
I can go from one extreme to another, from playing at the Sydney Opera House on the Songbook tour to shows with Soundgarden at Voodoo Fest, all in a week.
My first favorite band that made music important to me was the Beatles. I was a little kid. I didn't know who was singing what song or who wrote what song.
Stone Temple Pilots, Bush, and Silverchair are taking the simplest elements of Soundgarden, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam and melding them into one homogenous thing.
Children should always feel like the adults are living in this world to nurture them, to take care of them, to protect them from any bad thing that might come.
When you break out the acoustic guitar, the words are the focal point unless you're the Jimi Hendrix of the acoustic guitar. So the words have to have meaning.
There was a period in my life where most of my musical career was spent in a band that was very aggressive, and there was sort of a wall of volume all the time.
Radio and TV can still push a band, but things need to be shaken up. There is the Internet, but mostly what I see there is little kids on YouTube playing music.
Companies figured out that the easiest way to make money was to reissue records that the accounting department had paid for years ago and already made a profit.
When you start your first band and it has an impact on the rest of the world you go through a lot with those guys and you become very protective of that legacy.
Rock never meant the same thing to everyone, but when I was growing up in the late seventies, everyone could identify the five, ten bands that formed the center.
One thing that I have thought ever since Temple of the Dog is that I would never say no to an interesting collaboration, and that's partly where Audioslave came from.
That's the miracle of music. No one can reinterpret a Picasso, but a song can be remixed and covered and interpreted in an infinite number of ways. It's a living thing.
Seattle very much benefited from this geography where it was a town nobody had really heard of in terms of a music scene. So we had that factor of being a new discovery.
I had to teach myself to let go of the conventional rock way of playing guitar and singing. Some things you wouldn't expect to work, did and some things won't ever work.
You can really walk around a song and completely, if it's a good song, look at it from a lot of different angles. Johnny Cash with Rick Rubin illustrated that perfectly.
Once you sit in front of people and start playing songs, it's all on you. No matter what happens, it's entirely your responsibility the entire time. I like that intensity.