Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
As an artist, you can't expect a producer to just bring you a record. If you walk in and say, 'I want Kanye West's 'Power,' it just doesn't work that way.
I see a lot of people say you just make the music you wanna make and just love what you do, and that is what we do, but I wanna write the best songs we can.
It's so perfectly Alaska to be like, 'Dad we're going to the Grammys,' and for him to be like, 'Oh, well that's great, Johnny. All right, gotta go back to work.'
I was a shy kid growing up, and I liked the idea of playing under this alter ego: like, I could be Ziggy Stardust, but I also knew I could never be Ziggy Stardust.
Money messes up everything. It ruins art. The second you start putting price tags on this stuff, it's... Art isn't for just the wealthy. It's for everybody to enjoy.
When I talk to my mom and dad, and I'm in Paris, I'm like, 'Can you believe it?' It's ridiculous. I have a serious love for what we do. It's not something we take for granted.
Some New York bands you'll see rocking Ones or Dunks and things like that, but it is weird that the sneakerhead thing has become so massive. Personally, I think it's really silly.
A country is an individual in the world that represents a group of people, so I decided we would name our band after a country, and Portugal happened to be the one that popped up.
I would watch 'Sesame Street' and see neighborhoods and kids with other kids to play with, and I just didn't have that. You know, we were on a lake. We just didn't have that stuff.
Growing up, I just always doodled, which is the worst word for it. I would just draw things in class, get yelled at by my teachers, get my drawings taken away. That stuff happened all the time.
The period in the name - huge mistake, I know. We didn't think about that. We never thought we were going to be written up in magazines. The second we saw it in print, like, what a mistake, man.
For the people that don't know it, we've had members come and go from this band since the beginning. It's always been about collaboration, and it's been about just playing music with our friends.
My dad would come to pick me up from high school in a beaver-skin cap, big gloves, his parka and everything. It was so funny to see him show up - his beard all frozen from being out with the dogs.
That's really important in a producer - a producer that can step up and play a keyboard, play a bass, play a guitar, and help you with things instead of just saying, 'I think this could be better.'
Right after we recorded 'Satanic Satanist' and 'American Ghetto' here in Boston, we decided we'd grow our hair out. This is - was - like the Beatles thing. I wanted to see these pictures later in life.
My dad just left high school in '69, went to Woodstock, and after half a year of college for architecture, just took off for Alaska. He bought a van and went straight into the mountains and built a cabin.
When we were kids, my favorite thing was coming to upstate New York where my family is from and hanging out with my grandparents' friends pre-Internet and them asking if we had stores or 'Do you have TV in Alaska?'
We're just nerds that play music. Because we get played on the radio and have a Vitaminwater ad with Aaron Paul dancing on a treadmill, people are going to say we sold out. I don't write music for that. I write music for me.
It's funny, because I had no intention of being in a band because I was so shy. But I loved playing music and loved writing songs. I always thought I'd be in the background and, if I did get into a band, be a backup musician.
I grew up in Alaska, okay? My dad graduated high school and went straight to the mountains. He had $300 and staked a claim. He didn't even have enough to put a title on the land: just had the records that he bought before he moved.
Poor Ron Paul. He means well. He really does. But there's something about him. I don't know what it is. From falling victim to Sacha Baron Cohen's Bruno to that old-man shuffle, he just seems like kind of a... like kind of a sissy.
I think we're pretty spiritual people, the band in general. We're not a bunch of hippies or anything like that, but we like to work together and work with people. We believe that positive energy is pretty necessary in life, although it's not always easy to maintain.
We tour, we do the distance from friends and family, not really knowing how to connect with people on the same level. I've understood now, as much as we tour, we live day-to-day, so our lives are much different than the people who stay at home and go home every night.
There's something about Detroit, man: there's a serious vibe there. It could be that blue-collar, working-class-mentality person who lives out there. There's just something about it. It reminds me of Alaska. Texas has the same thing. Detroit is a little heavier than both.
We lived out in the middle of nowhere - the most random places - because of my father's work. We spent a lot of time in the car on long drives, just to get anywhere. We listened to oldies rock on the car radio, and the most-played group on oldies rock radio is the Beatles.
I like work, I like song writing, and I like the history of Atlantic Records. They've sat in the studio with so many artists - like Ray Charles, for example - and created something amazing. As a label, they seem to be great at growing bands rather than telling you how to do it.
Weird Al was something that kids would listen to. It's funny, super funny, smart. It's just kind of jokey. I remember hearing 'Smells Like Nirvana' before hearing 'Smells Like Teen Spirit.' That's how it really worked. I think it's just such a cool thing how he introduced us to so many cool bands. Even Queen - 'Another One Rides the Bus.'
I went to so many sleepovers where these parents were reading the 'Book of Revelation' before bed and things like that. I would listen to that stuff, and I would sit there and say to myself, 'If God is so great and so good, why is there this list of rules?' Like, you go to hell if you don't believe in him and hold him up above everyone else.