Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I grew up in the era of the concept album. What I do now is pick up on singles, and they are their own complete stories; you don't necessarily have to hear the rest of the album because I don't think albums are created like that anymore. They get songs from all over the place.
I didn't grow up as a religious person under any sort of system or anything like that, I just felt like I've always been sort of intrigued by that - how it can make people's lives better - I mean, it's a powerful thing. So I was interested in thinking about that kind of stuff.
However, the radio and national media depend much more on the hype from a good record label, and from a " buzz " about a band, then from just one or two good shows. There are a lot of artists that have a ton of good press going for them, and still do not make it big in the US.
However, the radio and national media depend much more on the hype from a good record label, and from a ' buzz ' about a band, then from just one or two good shows. There are a lot of artists that have a ton of good press going for them, and still do not make it big in the US.
I should be able to look at my accolades and go, "Come on, Paul. That's enough." But there's still this little voice in the back of my brain that goes, "No, no, no. You could do better. This person over here is excelling. Try harder!" It still can be a little bit intimidating.
An artist or writer always has to move forward. All the time you're trying to improve yourself, or at least look at ways to improve things or make things better. I'm not really one to harp on previous records. I'm always looking forward to what I'm doing now, and what's ahead.
But what was interesting about what the Who did is that we took things which were happening in the pop genre and represent them to people so that they see them in a new way. I think the best example is Andy Warhol's work, the image of Marilyn Monroe or the Campbell's soup can.
Things like science and technology still leave some gaps, so it's not as if everybody was sitting around doing nothing, but the bureaucracy and the whole structure of our culture is basically built out of men trying to be legitimate and making things up so they look important.
Music is a science, it heals depression, it awakens, most people don't know, they just take music for an entertainment, something to dance to, and enjoy yourself and you go to bed and forget it tomorrow, music must never be forgotten, it's like a fountain that keeps on flowing
People have made a living deconstructing Lennon and The Beatles songs because of their compositional sophistication. But what's so exciting about John is that he never had any of that training on musical theory; something just spoke to him, and he just knew what sounded right.
Hollywood and Disneyland are the legacy of Europe's cultural imperialism. We gave them nursery rhymes and they gave back film. Televised riots are as American as Barbie/ Big Macs. Tomorrow the riots will be forgotten but Mickey mouse will still be there. Welcome to Disneyland.
I kind of disguise my limitations by hanging out with very talented people. The excitement of the collision between the microphone-twirling guy from 1966 to now is just a fantastic adventure. There aren't many of us left and I've managed to kind of cover my tracks pretty good.
Chime out, thou little song of Spring, Float in the blue skies ravishing. Thy song-of-life a joy doth bring That's sweet, albeit fleeting. Float on the Spring-winds e'en to my home: And when thou to a rose shalt come That hath begun to show her bloom, Say, I send her greeting!
Everyone knows Earth, Wind & Fire. We know 'September,' all the big sort of hits from going out and dancing and stuff. When I was developing St. Lucia, I really started listening a little bit deeper, listening back to their stuff from the '70s and '80s, and really dug into it.
Obviously, the Sixties was a time when everyone wanted to experiment, and then everything became very formulated and corporate, so artists tended to get pushed into a kind of pattern. Now, I think that has continued with the emergence of televised talent shows like 'X Factor.'
If I want to do an orchestral record, if I want to do an acoustic record, if I want to do a death-metal record, if I want to do a jazz record - I can move in whichever direction I want, and no one is going to get upset about that. Except maybe my manager and my record company.
I think ultimately, bringing more nature back into the city is a way to deal with urban sprawl and things like that. If the cities feel a little more natural, people like to live there more rather than moving out and dividing up another piece of land that shouldn't be touched.
When Nicki was putting out mixtapes, she was the only female rapper that had any kind of buzz. And not to mention that she was on the track with the guys, you know? So you had the girls playing it, and you had the hood guys playing it, too, so you couldn't run away from Nicki.
Today, music is great for entertainment, but it is lacking soul; it's lacking substance, and it's difficult to find good stuff. There are too many corporate interests. It's not about the actual music because it's about the corporation, and music just becomes part of a package.
I think we live in a world where the most important thing is daily life: sharing a space with your family, making meals, being with your people. It's not only the idea of privacy, it's the beauty of the moment, at a time in the world when everything goes really fast - too fast.
I remember you would record a guitar part, and we would have to sit there for 15 or 20 minutes waiting for the computer to process it. You'd see the little wheel spinning on the computer, and you'd be praying that the hard drive didn't crash and you didn't lose the performance.
I don't have any great love for Chicago. What the hell, a childhood around Douglas Park isn't very memorable. I remember the street fights and how you were afraid to cross the bridge 'cause the Irish kid on the other side would beat your head in. I left Chicago a long time ago.
Come writers and critics Who prophesize with your pen And keep your eyes wide The chance won't come again And don't speak too soon For the wheel's still in spin And there's no tellin' who That it's namin' For the loser now Will be later to win For the times they are a-changin'.
Unfortunately, the simplest things - such as thinking for myself, creating my own reality and being whatever the hell I want to be each day of my life - are a sin. To be a good Christian basically means to give up the reigns of your life and let some unseen force do it for you.
To be a fan is to be curious, and to be curious is to have openness... Part of being a fan is to allow 360 degrees of experience - to immerse without judgment. It's like a really fearless step forward into new experience. There's something that feels very timeless about fandom.
There's nothing wrong with the screaming style of singing, and I'll be the first to admit that it conveys an emotion. But I'm getting older, and I can't scream and shout about the same things anymore. The songs I'm writing with Stone Sour call for a lighter, different approach.
With 'Seven Deadly Sins,' there was a lot of personal stuff in there that I didn't even realize I'd been carrying around for awhile. And a lot of guilt involved, a lot of emotion, a lot of depression. Once I was done writing that book, I was able to really let go of that stuff.
Mormonism truly was a part of my every decision since the day I was born. It taught me to serve others and to feel comfort about the next life. Who doesn't want to live for eternity and have a 'mansion in heaven'? It sounded like a rad deal to me when I was in my teenage years.
When the Greatest Hits came out and we did that tour, I just felt I wanted to take a break, totally. Probably because, as well, I was so young when I got famous. I did album, tour, album, tour, album, tour, then I had a public nervous breakdown where I just lost tons of weight.
Shortly after I moved to Los Angeles, I was looking for work, and I happened to be invited to Ray's studio and sat in and played on a couple of his demos. I didn't charge him a dime for it. I was on cloud nine to be working in the same room as Ray Charles, one of my huge idols.
'Lucky Man' I wrote when I was twelve years old. I wrote it when I first was given a guitar by my mother. I only knew four chords, but I used them all to write that song. And it just stayed with me, stayed in my head. I didn't even write it on a piece of paper. I remembered it.
The streets lie, the sidewalks lie, everything lies You can try and read it but you're gonna get it wrong...all wrong The summer evenings burn and melt and the nights glitter but you're gonna get it wrong And it's gonna sink its teeth into your flesh and pull you to the bottom.
Miles Davis would have this lineup of all these amazing musicians and one day would just say, 'We're done.' After tons of great records and tickets sold, he said, 'Now I'm going to grow my hair out and play my horn through a wah-wah pedal.' Rather than play it safe, he went on.
In Israel, there's a lot to learn from anyone, because to live there you've got to deal with the truth. Things happen real fast. Your day goes from cool to catastrophic in one second. Israelis know that the cafe you're in could blow up, or the shopping mall, and they rock that.
It is a fact that everyone's got a limited run in music - but who's to say how long that run lasts? I used to think that there would be no way I'd still be in music when I was 40. I used to think anyone who was 40 was an old man, and they probably shouldn't be doing it anymore.
I had so many songs that were actually sort of finished. And I deleted them. I wrote on my website that I'd put them on the shelf, but that wasn't true. I actually deleted them from my computer. I got sort of trigger-happy and I think I deleted about 200 songs from my computer.
When real music comes to me - the music of the spheres, the music that surpasses understanding - that has nothing to do with me, cause I'm just the channel. The only joy for me is for it to be given to me, and to transcribe it like a medium... those moments are what I live for.
I really try as hard as I can on the show. If people can't see my face, if they can't see my sweat beads or at least that I'm struggling, that I'm not just pretending or going through the motions, then who can blame them for thinking that it's some kind of ridiculous piss-take?
Not to rag on myself, but when people say, 'What does it feel like to be an icon?' I'm like, 'My dog does not think I'm an icon, my cat does not think I am an icon, my cousin does not think I am an icon.' I have a really lovely group of friends, and I just don't think about it.
About myself I have no great illusions. I know what I am. I know what I'm good at. I know what I ain't. I'm always hoping to surprise myself. But I do have a love of music and I do love to communicate it, and that's the best I can do, really. And I can raise a good family, too.
I was very aware of performers who have a persona, whether it's Siouxsie Sioux or Patti Smith or Lydia Lunch, and I'm just this middle-class girl coming from a more conventional upbringing, this California person. But in a way I felt like it's important to represent the normal.
That's something that seems to happen when I'm writing, where maybe things that don't necessarily make a lot of logical sense are put together, and yet we struggle to make sense of these things somehow. I'm not quite sure why that is; it's something about human nature, I guess.
Having toured a lot really influences some of the decisions you make in the studio - is this part anthemic enough for people to want to sing to it at a show? is this part dynamic enough? Is this drum beat 'arena' enough? You think about it a lot when you are creating, for sure.
When I start to write a song, I have the words and I have the melody, and then it's just a matter of making it to the end. I think if I have something that I could identify as a talent, it would be that I can finish a song. I kind of know intuitively where the melody should go.
All the seven deadly sins are man's true nature. To be greedy. To be hateful. To have lust. Of course, you have to control them, but if you're made to feel guilty for being human, then you're going to be trapped in a never-ending sin-and-repent cycle that you can't escape from.
I am a micromanager, and I love being involved in every detail of my life, but in the big picture, you realize how little control you have. 'Air I Breathe' is about those moments of surrender where you get to something that is bigger than you, and you don't have answers for it.
There are methods to creating a mayhem that sounds different from your usual mayhem. Because mayhem and a heavy drum backbeat end up sounding like Green Day or something. But if you put a different beat within it to create some air and lightness, the chaos comes through better.
We want to keep extending our brand into different places, into movies and soundtracks and our music will live on through licensing and our brand lives on through merchandise and new generations will get to wear our clothing and our T-shirts and stuff that's associated with us.
I didn't come in and say: "I'm a singer." I came into the band as a second guitar player and a vocalist, but not the songwriter. I had been writing poetry for years, so I sort of had the nature of the words. I felt like no one else could sing my lyrics, so I took a crack at it.
I was only a teenager when I played with the Herd and Humble Pie, and I was still in my early twenties when 'Frampton Comes Alive!' came out. That was an immense amount of work in a relatively short period of time. I needed to stop for a while and grow up, but I didn't do that.