Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Most people don't take some things into consideration. When they hear an album, they hear the artist or they hear the lyric or they hear the melody. But they don't really think about the environment in which it was recorded, which is so important. It's that thing that determines what the album sounds like.
I think the producers or whoever's doing the show are tripping so hard. They must be on acid. They live in this, like, weird grass mound and there's this 'sun' in the sky with this little baby's face that's just, like, bleaaargh-aarghagh. It's just so totally insane. It's such an acid thing, man. For kids!
It's good for people to be able to see an archive of an artist learning how to write and getting better, especially for teenagers who are starting to write: to see that I started out making pretty easy and weird and bad-sounding music and that you can teach yourself how to write over a long period of time.
Whenever I was in the dressing room on my own, I'd start playing blues to myself. One night, Bob Daisley, the bass player, came in and said, 'You know, Gary, you should make a blues album next. It might be the biggest thing you ever did.' I laughed. He laughed, too. But I did, and he was right, and it was.
I think this market space, this modern world we're living in, one of its greatest failures is that it can only seem to describe a collective in terms of consumers or clients. It never sees an audience or a community as part of the process. And that's something I'm quite proud of, even if the music is crap.
At school, I'd refuse to take part in biology lessons when animals were being dissected. One time, the teacher announced that we would be gassing worms. So I ran around the room, gathered up all the worms and set them free in the fields. I just loved animals and couldn't bear the thought of them suffering.
It seemed so wimpy at first when I started to play [guitar]. So I started playing loud with lots of effects just to try to mimic the dynamic [of the drums]. Drums seemed a lot more expressive. [I was] Trying to emulate the feeling of playing the drums on the guitar - I guess that's why I played it so loud.
Sometimes it's easier to make decisions when you know that you've tried things that are so wrong, you know, "OK, I don't go that way with it. I don't go this way with it." The way I work, I kind of have to go down all those wrong paths to know that the one I'm doing really is the one that is going to work.
In the present political situation, it's an interesting phenomenon to look at: what is the appeal of an autocratic leader? Why do people want somebody who yells at them? For most of us, that's so hard to understand. Who wants that? I think there are a lot of people for whom that fulfills some kind of need.
I remember feeling ashamed, for some reason. I was ashamed of my parents. I couldn't face some of my friends at school anymore, because I desperately wanted to have the classic, you know, typical family. Mother, father. I wanted that security, so I resented my parents for quite a few years because of that.
Alcohol is certainly one of the most abused drugs since ever and ever, since Dionysus. They say have a glass of wine at dinner, which was done in the Latin countries. In Italy we always had a glass of wine at dinner. It is a good thing. But if you have dozens of glasses of wine at dinner it is not so good.
I've been quite fascinated by the relative insignificance of human existence, the shortness of life. We might as well be a letter in a word in a sentence on a page in a book in a library in a city in one country in this enormous universe! And that kind of fear and insignificance has kept me awake at night.
I believe in dreams. I believe that every night on the planet everything that is, was and can be is dreamt. I believe that what happens in dreams is no different no less important than what happens in the waking world. I believe that dreams are the closest equvalent present-day mankind has to trime travel.
Then when we did the untitled record, we just didn't feel like putting joke stuff on it, so we didn't. It wasn't really a deliberation or a real introspective thing like, "Are we going to joke on this one, are we not going to joke on this one?" We just didn't feel like it on the untitled one, so we didn't.
I love David's prayer, "Search me, God, and know my heart..." [Psalm 139:23]. I prayed that a lot. "God, search my heart and my life, reveal to me any areas of my life that you want me to see, any identities you want to show me, and help me dare to believe that your grace has erased them once and for all."
You know, being in a rock band, you can't overdo the costume changes too much because everyone thinks, oh, that's not a real rock band. Look how many times he changes costumes. That's not rock. Rock's about going on in a T-shirt and staying in it and getting it all dirty. But that's not really my approach.
A lot of people I know hate Paul McCartney in general. I guess I understand, but I'm a fan. I think he's a little underrated in my peer group - unlike John Lennon. He's not my favorite Beatle, but he's a goddamn good songwriter and he makes a lot of really cheesy, schmaltzy stuff but he's still underrated.
I was reading an article with Stevie Ray Vaughan a long time ago, and the number '1959' stuck out to me for some reason. So I started searching those out as the band got more popular and I could actually afford one. And I found this one in Los Angeles. That's what introduced me to the whole world of 1959s.
I was really psyched about crooner types like Frank Sinatra or Scott Walker. Something that comes more from the stomach than the throat. There's an emotional thrust to singing that way that I wanted to try on my own. I can't really sing deep and strong like that, but I wanted to just aim in that direction.
Drummers get bored. You tell them to play something simple, and it gets more complicated as they do it. If they're not a composer, if they don't have any kind of investment in the music, they'll just add a bit there and another bit there, and you think no! Don't do that. So you end up using a drum machine.
I want to be someone who is doing something solid. And I am doing my thing. You can like it or not, but I know that now I have a really nice group of really cool and talented actors that follow me. It's the same for them. They have a special connection with my movies because we do these movies differently.
There's a constant conflict, really, within me. As much as I really enjoy what I do at home... I play on my own little soccer team and I've been taking part in the community and living the life of any ordinary guy, I always find myself wistful and enveloped in a feeling I can't really get out of my system.
My father took me to see Hank Williams on December 14th, 1952. I was two years and four months of age. And I remember a little cool eddy of hair hitting my cheek, and I remember the smell of his hair oil, and I remember the mingling tonality of the small talk before the show started. Those are my memories.
When you're making music or playing a song, I find the moments when there are no instruments being played even stronger than when they are being played. Because they add tension. It's also an ego-less thing - a place where you have no ego - when you're with a bunch of musicians who stop and listen instead.
Every song has a different genesis, or feeling. Usually the lyrics, I don't really know what it's all about, I just kinda do it. I mean, there's a combination of, like you're saying, that kind of lyrics about commitment or vaguely relationship lyrics mixed with jokey 90s Beck-style non-sequiturs and stuff.
With rock music, it usually revolves around the band. You go in as a band and probably take about a year to record an album. But for a hip-hop song, you can create a track and an idea with verses and choruses in a day, and get three different people on it. It seems like you're able to do more with hip-hop.
We were a very politically active family. My father was one of the first lawyers in South Africa to have a black partner, so I grew up very aware of the struggle going on. Coming from that background, it really gave me chills to have my music be a part of the election of the first black American president.
I always look terrible before the show. That's when I feel worst. And after the show it's like a million bucks. Simple as that. You feel a little tired but you never feel better. Nothing makes me feel as good as those hours between when you walk offstage, until I go to bed. That's the hours that I live for.
One of the main dilemmas that's pretty common to a lot of people who are getting older is the idea that maybe there's a finish line and that maybe there's a time in your life when you start to slow down and stop and smell the roses and just kind of settle into what will be a comfortable period in your life.
Soundgarden was incredibly democratic, and I was really proud of that. I felt like we got along better than most bands we toured with and most people we knew. And at the same time, when you're that democratic and concerned with each other's opinions, you're always concerned with what the other people think.
I think the path is different for everybody. Go after the doors that are open to you. That has always been my motto getting into the music business. Do the things that seem to be good opportunities and work hard at it. Try to make good decisions and be nice. Hopefully all of that will pay off at some point.
I went mainstream in a major way with the song "Let's Dance." And what I found I had done was put a box around myself. It was very hard for people to see me as anything other than the person in the suit who did "Let's Dance," and it was driving me mad - because it took all my passion for experimenting away.
When I was going to high school, in the high school band we would play these kind of hour-long concerts for our parents. All the parents would come to the gymnasium, and the band would play an hour-long kind of orchestra piece. 'Synchestra' is supposed to be similar, like a high school band orchestra piece.
I could Google image search 'the sky' and I would probably see beautiful images to knock my socks off. But I can't Google, you know, 'What does my friend look like today?' For you to be able to take a picture of yourself that you feel good enough about to share with the world - I think that's a great thing.
I've spent the last few years really trying to come out of that belief system. Speaking mythologically, it's like Beauty and the Beast. The beast kidnaps the beauty until she learns to love him for who he is. In a sense, our negative beliefs kidnap our greatness, our life-force. We have to go and kiss them.
Everyone has to suffer the gimmicks and other stunts and machinations when they're starting out - only at the time, it doesn't feel like suffering; it's fun and different then. But a little fame goes a long way, and then one tries to cast off part of the heavy burden - a burden one can never totally escape.
Your connection to other people keeps you human, and that connection, staying human - that's what you have against control. It's like if somebody is being controlled by their job, the connection is to their family. And if they stay connected to those people, the job will never really have control over them.
Two weeks after having Bandit I was in a recording studio. I hadnt yet really fully understood what being a dad was and, man, I was exhausted. But she is 17 months now. Shes running, shes been running for a long time. Shes inspired me a great deal for the record. She even goes Wow Daddy! when I play to her.
The trick is: how do you talk about natural selection without implying the rigidity of law? We use it as almost an active participant, almost like a god. In fact, you could substitute the word 'god' for 'natural selection' in a lot of evolutionary writings and you'd think you were listening to a theologian.
All good writers inspire me as I have never thought I was any good. As far as a writer who made me think I could do it, it was Henry Miller. Not because I thought he was so simple that I reckoned I could pull it off as well, but it was his freedom and guts that really moved me to want to write all the time.
I believe that Fairport, in all its incarnations, has almost single-handedly been responsible for and has written the book on the history of the evolution of folk-rock in the UK. Over the years Ashley Hutchings, with his Albion Bands and Richard through his solo work have carried the torch to another level.
You can't expect to be the same person you were three years ago. Some people expect you to be and can't come to terms with the fact that if a year has elapsed between LPs, that means one year's worth of changes. The material consequently is affected by that, the lyrics are affected by that... the music too.
I think record stores play a huge part in discovering new music. When I was growing up I would spend hours going through all the bins looking for something new that seemed interesting to me and that could relate to what I was listening to at the time. This is why I want to support National Record Store Day.
I certainly know that on our first tour of America in 1968, David Crosby came to see us backstage at the Fillmore East in New York, and I was very pleased to meet him from Buffalo Springfield and that kind of stuff. He didn't ask me anything about the music, but he said, 'Where'd you get your clothes, man?'
The idea that musicians/artists have a responsibility to be community leaders or "role models" is problematic to me because I really believe that some of the most exciting art is not community-minded at least in any obvious or direct way, which is not to say that it is not ethical or consciousness-changing.
I did not fire Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys. I cannot fire Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys. I am not his employer. I do not have such authority. And even if I did, I would never fire Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys. I love Brian Wilson. We are partners. He’s my cousin by birth and my brother in music.
I did not fire Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys. I cannot fire Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys. I am not his employer. I do not have such authority. And even if I did, I would never fire Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys. I love Brian Wilson. We are partners. He's my cousin by birth and my brother in music.
Nirvana's amazing, but they're just never going to find another one, there's no artist development anymore, you're never going to have a U2, you're never going to have a Bruce Springsteen, those guys didn't make it off of their first single and real artists probably won't make it off of their first singles.
Any time you're stepping out on a limb as an artist, it's scary, especially when you have a lot of success. When you're reaching a lot of people, the masses, it's easy to stay in that niche, you know? Especially when you're making a lot of money and you know there's a formula, it's easy to stay in that rut.
I think a lot of people in their lives feel like they don't fit in, even if it looks like they do. People feel like outsiders even if others think we, the lives we live, have everything. If they are popular or they have everything they are supposed to have. Even then, people still don't feel quite included.