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When I produce someone's record I have to remember it's their record..no matter what I bring to it..er, sometimes that's not too easy:) It is a responsibility made less easy by people I work with encouraging me to play guitar on their record...A soon as I start playing guitar on someone's record it inevitably starts to sound like me...not always a good thing.
I was in college, but I got kicked out. It was a very free school, but I created a "bad impression." Like I was a bit more fiery in those days. At the time I got kicked out, I knew exactly what I was going to do and didn't even bother to go back for a leaving certificate. Then I was singing in folk clubs around Birmingham and playing jazz in clubs on Sundays.
I want to use songs that everybody knows or thinks they know. I want to show them a different side of it and open up that world in a more unique way. You have to believe what the words are saying and the words are as important as the melody. Unless you believe the song and have lived it, there's little sense in performing it. I never wanted to be a singer that
I told my students the other day in class, which is about the spirituality and creativity as much as it is about music. I said, 'If you're walking down the street and you see a baby carriage, and there's a baby in the carriage; you look down and your eyes meet the eyes of the baby. The baby looks at you: That's the kind of moment you're in when you're playing.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Politics Is the Entertainment Branch of Industry. C-SPAN's coverage of governmental proceedings is wonderful. Caution! Buffoons on the Hill! Wallowing in blabber and spew, regiments of ex-lawyers and used-car salesmen attempt to distract us from the naughty little surprises served up by deregulated corporate America.
Life is like a piece of string with a lot of knots tied in it. The knots are the karma you're born with from all your past lives, and the object of human life is to try and undo all those knots. That's what chanting and meditation in God consciousness can do. Otherwise you simply tie another ten knots each time you try to undo one knot. That's how karma works.
You had to change who you were to become famous. I thought that for a very long time. Even after signing a record deal, and then eventually getting my own recording company, Wonderland Records, I had to say no to a lot of opportunities to become well known. If it didn't align with my values and if it didn't support the image I had created for myself, I'd pass.
The beauty of the collage technique is that you're using sounds that have never met and were never supposed to meet. You introduce them to each other, at first they're a bit shy, clumsy, staring at their shoes. But you can sense there's something there. So you cut and paste a little bit and by the end of the song you can spot them in the corner, holding hands.
What's funny is that people think, "Well there has to be something more than wrestling, because wrestling has such an absurd quality to it." But if you tell a love story, people don't ask what else is in there. They say, "Oh, it's just a love story." All stories have many levels, but these ones show their hand and say, "You might want to look a little deeper."
Sometimes you wonder, I mean really wonder. I know we make our own reality, and we always have a choice, but how much is preordained? Is there always a fork in the road, and are there two preordained paths that are equally preordained? There could be hundreds of paths where one could go this way or that way -- there's a chance, and it's very strange sometimes.
After the revolution you have the problem of keeping things going, of sorting out all the different views. It's quite natural that revolutionaries should have different solutions, that they should split into different groups and then reform, that's the dialectic, isn't it - but at the same time they need to be united against the enemy, to solidify a new order.
You guys are evil. Canada's the best country in the world. We go to the doctor and we don't need to worry about paying him, but here, your whole life, you're broke because of medical bills. My bodyguard's baby was premature, and now he has to pay for it. In Canada, if your baby's premature, he stays in the hospital as long as he needs to, and then you go home.
Lego was our fourth film, because we did two Cloudys, so yeah there's a little bit of shorthand that's involved and then you can anticipate things- because for me it's like, I get a script for a movie and I go, "Wow that's a pretty good script", then you sign on and a couple months later they show you the first cut and you're like, "Whoa, how did that happen?"
There's nothing weirder than when your band finally gets big and you're playing sold-out arenas and you're selling millions of records, and you dread being a part of it all. It wasn't some master plan to go solo. I was just like, I would rather do my own thing, be happy, and have it be ten times less popular. That was really it. It just wasn't fun, the stress.
I think I gave indications early on that mine wasn't just going to be a commercial, er, career. If that were the case, then the first record would have been 10 versions of 'Loser.' I always thought it would be interesting if there was no such thing as gold and platinum records, or record deals, and people were just making music. What would the music sound like?
Tim Price continues to explore and develop his deeply personal approach to music. Through the years his persistence, determination and passion has enabled him to create a stellar reputation as a multiple woodwind master, composer, producer, author and last but not least educator. Tim is one of the best musicians active today and I'm happy to say he's my friend.
By just passing through things, I continue to slightly limit myself. I want the jobs that don't say that much. I'm often the stepping stone or the conduit from one thing to another. I love the idea of existing in a film and growing and having bigger arcs, and being in scenes where you're just being, as opposed to talking. That' one of my ambitions, lying ahead.
Sometimes, you've got to be in a place. You're just another guy. You can just blend in. I live out in the wilds of nowhere, out in Jersey. Even there, there's sometimes problems. College students like journey out there and show up at 11 o'clock at night, on my porch, looking into the door not saying anything. My wife and I are sitting there; it's really creepy.
I was like just writing and writing and then I kinda developed my sound. And then, my managers were like, "Okay, we're gonna try to get a deal." And then first it was Interscope, and then it was Atlantic. And then, I ended up signing with Atlantic, but it was like a long process, a really long... it was A LONG PROCESS. I feel like it took me two years to do it.
I'm really sensitive to the beginning of a motif or a phrase or something that's kind of the backbone or becomes kind of the spine that you grow muscle tissue onto. You know from that, if you have that good beginning, it's like everything that grows off it often has potential. Maybe I'm good at that early bit of recognition of pieces of potential. I'm not sure.
A lot of life is about how you feel relating to dealing with this person or that person. If this person makes you feel good, then they're a person to be around; if they don't, they're not. Being in a band is different. The group is the more important part, and you have to kind of shift the way you look at life when you're in a group of people that you work with.
It was 2002, we all got guitars for Christmas and started playing in my garage that summer, rehearsed there and in a warehouse for a bit for about a year. We did our first gig in June 2003 and we played a few gigs in and around Sheffield for a bit then started doing gigs outside of Sheffield about this time last year, recording demos while all this was going on.
I was sick of the way my lyrics had been extrapolated, their meanings subverted into polemics and that I had been anointed as the Big Bubba of Rebellion, High Priest of Protest, the Duke of Disobedience, Leader of the Freeloaders, Kaiser of Apostasy, Archbishop of Anarchy, the Big Cheese. Horrible titles any way you want to look at it. All code words for Outlaw.
Not only are we not using any programmed loops or computers onstage, we're also improvising with our instruments. We're playing our instruments probably more so than most people that I see play their instruments. I think we all sort of strive for that - we all want magical things to happen onstage. We don't say "mistakes" in this band, we call them "highlights."
You need 10,000 hours to figure out how to be good at something and I agree with that to a certain extent. It's like everything you do to lead up to a great recording or great performance is everything you've done in the past and you can't just, it's rare that someone wakes up in a void and goes and wakes up and makes the most brilliant recording or performance.
I am in a space now where I can try anything; and with Pink Floyd we've always been in a space where we were able to try out anything. I think we were very young then and we were very keen to experiment and try things out. It seems to me that this sort of experimenting is like working yourself towards something and trying to find what you like and what you want.
People have become separated from their bodies. They are no longer whole. I see them move from their offices to their cars and on to their suburban homes. They stress out constantly, they lose sleep, they eat badly. And they behave badly. Their egos run wild; they become motivated by that which will eventually give them a massive stroke. They need the Iron Mind.
I am not a trained actor and am not near the top of anyone's want list. I go after what I am offered, if I am so inclined. Now and then, I get offers for things that are not to my liking, in that I just don't care about the story. All this super tough guy stuff isn't anything that interests me all that much. I can't think of anything I turned down that I regret.
People always talk about good time rock and roll, Chuck Berry or whatever, like this liberating force for feeling good. But what I need in my life is to be liberated into feeling bad. Not sad. I have plenty of sad. What I need is a place where I can spray anger in sparks like a gnarled piece of electrical cable. Just be mad at stuff and soak in the helplessness.
I'd been an expert at taking beatings. Then I had a lucky break where I did a bully in, by total sheer luck. ... One minute I was the mark, and with just one swift move, I put the big man in school down. ... Once he was down, the whole atmosphere in the schoolyard changed. A huge cloud seemed to be lifted from me. ... I'd never been aware the cloud was so large.
My brother was in high school and he had a garage band going, but no one would sing. They were covering a Hatebreed song at the time and I knew the words for it. My brother knew I knew the words, so he came inside the house and he's like 'Hey Mitch, come out here and sing'. I did it and after that I started a band with my older brother. That's how I got started.
After watching a couple of live performances of bands like Nirvana, I was really excited and inspired by how raw and powerful it was. I wanted to at least aim in that direction with the guitar and do my own version of it. I know it doesn't really sound like that on the other end, but I wanted guitar, heavy rhythms, and singing to be the stamp of the whole thing.
Some people feel that it's controversial if I say that because my dad is known as a political artist. But I don't really believe that he was a political artist. I think some of his songs were political, and I think they were incredible because he was able to make art that was political and that wasn't pedantic. But I think he was unique in being able to do that.
I think being a DJ is that thing of learning what makes a crowd move. As a DJ, you're constantly learning. It's like chess or something. After a couple of years, you think you're good, then you see a real DJ that's been doing it for 20 years and they just blow you away. I think that's one of the things I like about DJing: you can get better and better and better.
Michael Bloomfield came in after rock n roll started, and he was a great guitarist. He idolized me - I know that. What else can I say ? he was a young, excitable man. To him, drugs were plentiful, and that was no good. I talked to him like he was a son of mine. He was a great and he was gonna be greater. But he was part of the "in-crowd" and so he never got there
Instead of taking the 'I'm cool, I hope you adore me' path (with my music), I chose the path of how to connect. I think that's the reason a lot of people feel a deeper connection with our band than other bands, and I also feel that's why people polarize on us. If you don't get it, it seems preposterous; if you do get it, it's really heavy - it has a weight to it.
I did it a little bit in college, but now I've been doing it more. But yeah, it's not, I think you can definitely have a sense of humour about it. Like a lot of the time I'll finish my set with 'Sandstorm' by Darude - do you know that song? That's a funny song. People also go apeshit when you play it. But at the same time, it's not like the whole thing is a joke.
I guess I could be singing about Superman, or about Zarathustra coming down from the mountain, but in my mind I was singing about Julian Assange. I wish I could say that Nietzsche inspired my lyrics but all I can honestly say is I was inspired by the graphic design of these '70s paperback covers for Beyond Good & Evil and The Birth of Tragedy and The Gay Science.
I was educated in London at Central Saint Martins and had this whole thing about getting together with a lot of international students. Twenty-three languages were spoken during our lunch breaks! The school was very open minded, you could do whatever you wanted. Some people loved that freedom, others got lost. Gareth Pugh was a classmate, and so was Peter Jensen.
All kinds of music comes out that I'm not prepared for. Some of it is good, some of it rubbish, but I kind of accept it all. That's the nature of stream-of-consciousness. You can't always come up with your most lucid material in the heat of the moment. I take that risk when I play live. I open up my mind, however fertile a creative springboard it is that evening.
I was living in Gainesville, Florida, and our babysitter brought over the soundtrack to The Who's "Tommy" - not the actual record "Tommy", but the soundtrack to the movie with Elton John and Aretha Franklin. I remember hearing it for the first time and it was so confusing. It was like waves and waves of unknowable and indescribable sound coming out of the stereo.
I think it's a shame when pop culture forgets that theatricality is a big part of it. When Neil Young is fumbling around in his pocket looking for the right harmonica, it doesn't matter that he's a dude in the hat who is a man of the people - there's a theatricality there. You don't have to be David Bowie or the Kabuki theater to have that theatricality going on.
I think that there is a purity aesthetic, like "I just make art because I'm an artist and I can't help it. I don't care what the critics say." But different mediums have a different relationship with the public. If you're in a performing medium it's hard not to place some weight on whether or not people come to your shows, or whether or not they're enjoying them.
Big box just wasn't our strength. We are a men's and boy's specialty store focused on providing high quality clothing with custom tailoring. Our customer is king. When we had seven stores, communication between the stores and with our customers became more disconnected. We started to lose that great family 'camaraderie' that is essentially the key to our success.
I really like to think of each record as its own thing. So, for sure, but I hate the idea of being stuck in anything. Like I want to do a Hawkwind-style record too, or a noise rock record or a hardcore record. Why not, you know? I would just not want to keep heading too far in one direction, without pulling off and going the other way. That is what is fun for me.
With a lot of what we take to be true feelings, especially on pop records, we feel them because they're cleverly crafted. And because the words are written by somebody who knows how to craft words and draw on those things and convey those feelings. That doesn't mean they're dishonest. But it also doesn't mean that it's all just pure primitive emotion spilling out.
The interesting thing is that it seems like George W. Bush would have been happy being the president of anything. He could have been president of Major League Baseball. Less people killed. It wouldn't have affected the world on a planetary level. Sure, there would have been little things. There would have been scandals and kind of numbskull things here and there .
I've always enjoyed prasadam much more when I've been at the temple, or when I've actually been sitting with Prabhupada, than when somebody's brought it to me. Sometimes you can sit there with prasadam and find that three or four hours have gone by and you didn't even know it. Prasadam really helped me a lot, because you start to realize "Now I'm tasting Krishna."
... Grateful Dead - that's it !! ... nobody in the band liked it, (the name) I didn't like it, either, but it got around that that was one of the candidates for our new name, and everyone else said, 'Yeah, that's great.' It turned out to be tremendously lucky. It's just repellent enough to filter curious onlookers and just quirky enough that parents don't like it.
I've just recently started doing the promo bits for the new album, and the funny thing is that the people who come to talk to me about these things seem to be getting younger. It's like the people who like the music are all young kids and they're on top of you - they know all about what you're doing, and they're excited and animated about it. So it's a lot of fun.