Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I've always been in awe of filmmakers and their patience in realizing their vision because I could never do that.
I don't read or write music in the traditional sense, so I have to figure it out on the fly while I'm in the studio.
Quantitative methods are no more synonymous with objectivity than qualitative methods are synonymous with subjectivity.
Most solo artists go out on their own and put their name on the record. I prefer to create little alternative universes.
Movies were, to me, like a way out. It was an escape valve. I remember having my parents drop me off at movies all the time.
The creative process for a musician is very different than for a filmmaker. I have an idea, and I can pretty much execute it.
Hearing other peoples' interpretations of your lyrics, to me, is just a total kick in the pants. Half the time, they're better.
Diamanda Galás, the avant-weird performance artist... 'The devil's wife,' someone calls her. Faith No More loves Diamanda Galás.
When you're young and creative, you don't know how to channel all that creative energy, so sometimes it goes to the wrong places.
Orchestral musicians have a different approach than we do, and when I say 'we,' I mean musicians who don't know what they are doing.
I lived in Bologna. I go back quite often, and I still have lots of connections and lots of friends. It was a nice period in my life.
I think that first and foremost, a lot of turntable artists end up using really the same sounds over and over, and they really get recycled.
I've always been interested in film, so to get involved in any way in the genesis of making a film or music for a film is fascinating to me.
I guess I'm getting to the age where a lot of other people my age have real jobs, and when they're hard-up they refer to an old-timer like me.
With Faith No More, even though we're a bunch of old men, what I remember about our best shows is some sort of confrontation with the audience.
Things die for a reason, and in Bungle's case, it was a lot of reasons. It was great while it lasted but not something I'd go crawling back to.
I really don't want to put more than a couple of records out a year, and I think that makes sense - on an artistic level, but also for my label.
As an artist, I would never let myself get boxed in. I'm a human being, too, and like most humans, I have interest in many different types of music.
I am constantly amazed at the musicians that are able to do the same thing over and over for 20 or more years. That would drive me absolutely insane.
There are reasons that bands and musicians make demos and outtakes - because they are not good enough to make the record. A lot of people forget that.
You can get bored up there on stage, night after night. But it's an open forum where you can get away with almost anything, so you might as well do it.
I had never been taken in like I was in Italy just by saying a few words. That made me feel like I had to put in the effort, and I want to be one of them.
Any idiot, any stockbroker can get out there and live out a fantasy and pretend like he's playing music. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
I create a guise or a band that I can operate within, and within each one of those bands, I've got an M.O. or a set of rules and parameters I can work within.
If someone were to hire me for a film they'd be getting a certain kind of package, that's for sure, a certain set of tools. But I would listen to the director.
I don't actually read that much. I like movies a bit more. That's how I come up with ideas - by seeing things, hearing things, recycling things. Stealing things!
I have to make an effort about things like going to the grocery store. That stuff reminds me that I don't live in the real world, and you know what? I'm thankful.
Especially with Fantomas, i'm just trying to stretch out what the band can do. Figuring out, really, on the job or on recordings, what I can or can't get away with.
To me, the stage is like the free zone. That's what makes it exhilarating. For whatever reason, there's this weird little square where it's kind of a romper room for adults.
Some artists can work under one guise, whether it's a name or a band or doing film soundtracks, put all of their ideas in one pot and move on. Me, I need to compartmentalize.
The Faith No More stuff isn't about me. It was a band. Maybe that's where a lot of journalists got the wrong idea. You don't just pluck a song off a tree and put vocals on it.
We're constantly being fed images and being told what to like and what is good, and for the most part, I think people enjoy living that way. It takes a lot of the thinking out of it.
That's one of the great things about touring. It makes you machinelike in a way that you can re-create this music not only in the right way but even better than when it was conceived.
I would like to do more film scoring, period. Whether it is a big film, a small film, or just anything. I feel like I have a lot to learn, and what better way to do it than on the job?
In earlier years, I was more of a clown with a big bag of tricks. I'd show up in the studio and kind of go, 'Well, what do you want? Do you want the screaming banshee or the howling owl?'
I've got a comfortable home for my music where I can put out whatever the hell I want, and I feel like the slate is really clean, and I can get away with anything. It's a nice, free feeling.
When you start to kind of immerse yourself in that improvisation culture, you gotta be comfortable enough with your instrument to throw yourself into a really potentially dangerous situation.
I don't get too much enjoyment out of sitting around the campfire and looking at old photos. That's just not me. I don't get the thrill of doing that. So, I don't sit around listening to my old records.
I learned what I could do with my voice on stages and because of the people that I was around. It wasn't me sitting in a room by myself. I didn't know what I was doing. I was figuring it out on the fly.
I'm not a poet. I'm not up onstage to get something off my chest. I'm making musical statements, or, most of the time, musical questions for people to figure out, and I'm not going to get in the way of that.
I always forget about some of the things I've done, because you do 'em, and sometimes they don't come out, and... most of it's almost like daily chores or something. You check it off your list, and then it's gone.
The studio is my main compositional tool. And I used to be horrible in the studio. I didn't know any kind of technical stuff. But when you have something in your head, you've gotta figure out a way of executing it.
Sometimes a certain project will have a smell... It will have a little stench about it. That is a warning signal. You know it's going to be a nightmare. You know they are not going to like it, and it's not worth it.
I think that too many people think too much about my lyrics. I am more a person who works with the sound of a word than with its meaning. Often I just choose the words because of the rhythm not because of the meaning.
'A Perfect Place' is character-driven. The director for that wanted a couple of identifiable themes with a bunch of variations. That is what I did. The director for 'The Solitude of Prime Numbers' did not want that at all.
If I was in a bad mood, then maybe I won't talk about it, but you're going to know about it somehow. If something was bothering me, maybe I would have acted a little bit like a child, meaning I go break something in a room.
I know that whatever I put out, whether people think it's pop or noise or whatever, it's always going to be some kind of a freak or mutation. It's not going to be anything pure that a lot of people will relate to. And that's fine.
I don't know why, but there's a certain element of panic in writing lyrics that I'm not sure I enjoy. I don't write lyrics first, ever. I've never done that. So, in a sense, the lyrics are a bit of an afterthought - it's music first.
Puffy's the only guy who's jealous. All drummers want to be singers. I think it's a myth that the singer needs to be the focus. Bands perpetuate that myth. With somebody like Sebastian Bach it makes sense. Look at him. He could be in an Avon ad.
The only way I can make sense of my music is to compartmentalize it as opposed to having one band that I have to throw everything into. For me, it's just more fun and more challenging to create little worlds where a song or a piece can make sense.