Fifteen minutes of fame doesn't make a career. An article in a magazine, newspaper, interview on television or multiple print ads may stroke your ego, but nothing much else. An artist's career is a lifetime venture. Just because an artist is on top doesn't mean they are sheltered from a crash. As has been stated, the higher you climb, the harder you fall.

There is order in the universe, even though it looks like chaos. We separate the world into categories: this is good and this is bad. But life is set up to trick us. It's a series of illusions we invest in. And ultimately those investments don't serve our understanding, because physicality is always going to let you down, because physicality doesn't last.

Caring. And reading the Bible, learning about God, Jesus, love. He said, 'Bring on the children', 'Imitate the children', 'Be like the children' and 'Take care of others.' Take care of old people. And we were raised with those values. Those are very important values and my family and I we were raised with those values and they continue strong in us today.

I think the most exciting thing is access to information. People's ability to document things and expose things that may have not otherwise been documented and exposed. All the information you want is available instantly, which is overwhelming, but I think can have a positive change on the political process and accountability for leaders and corporations.

Yet you could feel a vibration in the air, a sense of hastening. It had started with the moon, inaccessible poem that it was. Now men had walked upon it, rubber treads on a pearl of the gods. Perhaps it was an awareness of time passing, the last summer of the decade. Sometimes I just wanted to raise my hands and stop. But stop what? Maybe just growing up.

If I have any regrets, I could say that I'm sorry I wasn't a better writer or a better singer...When I was younger, I felt it was my duty to wake people up. I thought poetry was asleep. I thought rock 'n' roll was asleep...An artist may have burdens the ordinary citizen doesn't know, but the ordinary citizen has burdens that many artists never even touch.

I can't imagine living a life without God in my life. He is my best friend, He's my buddy, He's the one that I talk to when there's no one around. I talk to Him when people are around a lot too. He's my confidant, He's my advisor, He's my director. I just don't know why you wouldn't want that in your life. He's just like a bodyguard, He is your protector.

Making two possibilities a reality. Predicting the future of things we all know. Fighting off the diseased programming Of centuries, centuries, centuries, centuries. Science fails to recognise the single most Potent element of human existence. Letting the reigns go to the unfoldings faith, Science has failed our world. Science has failed our mother earth.

Rock 'n' roll is sexuality personified. It is attitude. It is all the things that your parents told you not to do. It's the freedom to express yourself. It's being alive. It expresses the times. It's a magazine, a newspaper that tells the truth. If you listen to rap today, it's all about the truth. And that's what we all want. Just give me a little truth.

So . . . middle school? Awkward.Having a hobby that's different from everyone else's? Awkward. Singing the national anthem on weekends instead of going to sleepovers? More awkward. Braces? Awkward. Gain a lot of weight before you hit the growth spurt? Awkward. Frizzy hair, don't embrace the curls yet? Awkward. Try to straighten it? Awkward!So many phases!

I can't presume to speak for the others, but I never felt anything negative from anyone when I was onstage with Television. When I played rhythm behind Lloyd, the only thing that concerned me was to push him as hard as I could so that he'd go beyond what he was capable of and come up with something new, and vice versa. That's the only thing that mattered.

I'm not very good at doing two things at the same time. I've never been good at the walk and bubblegum thing. I've been doing this 16 hours a day. I haven't had a day off. But it's very exciting, too, just to meet all these people doing really fertile stuff. It's sort of where I come from anyway, hanging out with people who believe in something incredible.

I think there is a predisposition among Christians that Hollywood is anti-Jesus or anti-Christianity. I was warned I'd have to fight to maintain the freedom to express my beliefs. It's an unfair stereotype, and so far that's been the farthest from the truth. While everyone I work with may not share my beliefs, I have been surrounded by nothing but support.

I was hoping in the last fifteen minutes that Barcelona would beat them. I've made my mind up on Benitez tonight. He's a nice man but he's got a huge negative streak running through him. Liverpool was terrible in the second half. They didn't play football. If that was a concert, you'd boo. Gerrard: found out. A nothing player. They were terrible. Terrible.

Audrey Auld is a great singer songwriter. She holds a unique place in contemporary Americana/Roots music. I believe that this uniqueness is largely due to the fact that she is Australian. This affords her a totally different attitude as an artist than traditional American contributors to this genre. Audrey is one of the most honest original artists I know.

I'm older now, and I been through that, like, 'Stop. Tell the truth, what I need to do?' And I think that's important, as far as artist, for me to stand for what I believe in, And a lot of times people don't like that, you know what I'm saying. You become a troubled artist, or, 'You don't listen,' but as long as I say 'Yeah, I'll do it!' I'm a good person.

Back when I had a little, I thought that I needed a lot. A little was overrated, but a lot was a little too complicated. See, zero didn't satisfy me. A million didn't make me happy. That's when I learned a lesson that it's all about your perception....THERE'S HOPE. It doesn't cost a thing to smile. You don't have to pay to laugh. Better thank God for that.

A lot of that I base on, "Is it still going to sound interesting and fresh to me in five years, am I going to be embarrassed by this in five years?" It's easier for me to do stark, moody, pretty stuff, and I have all this pop stuff inside me, but it's a lot more dangerous, and pop is just apt to sound contrived and sort of pedestrian if you're not careful.

This kind of passionate faith can be painful. Not caring is easy. Caring hurts. Caring costs you something. But without this sort of faith, you will never create to your fullest potential. Faith is a gift. Like I've said, felt belief is not necessarily something that you choose to have or not to have. But it is a gift that you can open yourself to receive.

While I was there, I was just gathering images and names, and ideas and rhythms, and I was storing all of these things - which I didn't realize I was doing - but I was storing them all in an attic in my mind somewhere. And when it was time to sit down and write songs, when I reached into the attic to see what I was gonna write about, that's what was there.

I don't know the reasons why something is intimidating to me or disgusting to me and I don't like feeling that way, either. I don't like it when something turns me off, on any level. So, its a matter of saying: Well, I can either sit here and reject, or I can do double-time embracing of something else just to reassure myself that I'm not against the world.

I find it really interesting that people are shocked by the raw, natural representation of a woman and a man's body. I guess it's subverting our expectations in terms of how we've come to expect women to present themselves when they're being naked. Also the woman's and the man's role is subverted in that image. You'd expect the man to be carrying the woman.

What was nice about the nineties is that it was an example of music that responded to a desire of the times. It spoke to the social conditions of the times. Women were making more money. Women were saying, "My voice counts. If we're going out on a Friday night, I don't want to see a Rambo movie. I want to go see a singer/songwriter who sings about my life".

We must begin looking at each other as brothers and sisters...and not walking brochures. We must see each other's strengths and encourage those strengths....We must see each others weaknesses and be patient with those weaknesses... sometimes even look beyond what we see as "weaknesses" and move on with compassion and love and respect. That takes true faith.

Say you'll love, love me forever Never stop, not for whatever Near and far and always and Everywhere and everything. I love you, always forever Near and far, close and together Everywhere, I will be with you Everything, I will do for you I love you, always forever Near and far, close and together Everywhere, I will be with you Everything, I will do for you.

There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins. Religious beliefs are sacred to people and at all times should be respected and honored. As a civil rights activist of the past 40 years, I cannot support a show that disrespects those beliefs and practices.

It's hard for me to play seated theaters because people tend to sit down and get a little bit complacent, so it's less energy. It's just very dry and dead. People start to feel like they're watching a movie. The environment when they walk into it, it's not standing room only, smoking and drinking and rock 'n' roll. So it's a little bit dangerous to do that.

Alpha Phi Alpha, the oldest of Negro Fraternities, with all of its members presumably far above the average American and having a good practical understanding of the salient factors involved in the Negro's problem, and which a membership upwards of eight thousand men, should be able to take into their hands the leadership in the Negro's struggle for status.

I got into music by happenchance and luck and wearing a t-shirt with "I hate Pink Floyd" on it. The irony has never failed to amuse me ever since because I didn't hate Pink Floyd at all! And yet you have an entire range of people out there believing that the best thing you can do in life is to hate Pink Floyd. Come on, It's because it's the world I live in!

...We're people and we're different, all of us. And we should be using our differences to bring ourselves closer together. You know? Not be afraid of something that we don't know. ... It's unfortunate that things take a while to progress like this, but it was a great, great victory for equality. I'm proud New York has the balls to stand up for what's right.

I see people allowing their lives to diminish, to become shallow, so they can't enjoy the deep wells of experience. Maybe it's always been this way, when the heart tends to shut down. If only the heart shut down and there were no repercussions, it would be O.K., but when the heart shuts down, the whole system goes into a kind of despair that is intolerable.

Ever since I was a kid, I've been into clothes, but not really labels- that's kind of only been in the last year or so. It's something I've always cared about. I used to just constantly thrift and make stuff and cut stuff up and borrow my dad's stuff and borrow my little brother's stuff and all that jazz. ... It's just, if something is cool, then it's cool.

Thinking isn't something you think about. It comes naturally. Thinking involves many things. It involves being an observer. It involves analyzing things, taking in what's around you in the world and finding how to make it inspire your work or turn it into a lesson to teach your children; it's paying attention to details. That's what thinking is: processing.

I don't understand racism. We are all the same and I have the perfect hypothesis to prove it. I play to all those countries and they cry in all the same places in my show. They laugh in the same places. They become hysterical in the same places. They faint in the same places and that's the perfect hypothesis. There is a commonality that we are all the same.

There are tons of people in the West who love fiddles, banjos and mandolins. If you got to any cowboy poetry and music gathering those are the instruments they use. It's acoustic music. We don't do that much modern country that has electric guitars and a lot of volume. It's a gentler form of music. It's from the land and comes from the ranchers and farmers.

Advice? Focus on the craft. Study the greats. Try and understand how and why they made the writing choices they did. Then, start by copying them...just as an exercise. See if you can do similar things. Learn how to write a song like so and so. Then, when you've done that, write a song like yourself. Learn to color within the lines before going outside them.

Putting on your crown is really like accepting the fact that you are a queen. You're a great woman. Wherever you are in life, just keep on that path, and so for me, sometimes as women, we forget - we forget that about ourselves. So, putting on your crown is sort of reminding yourself that, hey, I'm a queen, and I can do what I want in this life and take it.

If you're prematurely born or if you have things happening when you're like a baby being born. If you have to learn how to walk right or if there's something wrong with your gait or just physical things that are happening. Illnesses affect your family and they impact you because you want to do the best you can to help your family member become more healthy.

Things are much more complicated. Feminism versus pornography, for example. There are a lot of feminists who think it is bad, but others think it's good. I have become, you might call it mature - I would call it senile - and I can see both sides. But you can't write a satirical song with 'but on the other hand' in it, or 'however'. It's got to be one-sided.

I recently realized that Television has influenced a lot of English bands. Echo and the Bunnymen, U2, Teardrop Explodes - it's obvious what they've listened to and what they're going for. When I was sixteen I listened to Yardbirds records and thought, "God, this is great." It's gratifying to think that people listened to Television albums and felt the same.

If I want to walk out in the desert and heat up a can of beans on a fire, I still can. In those movies like Gattaca or whatever, the space age stuff is always all there is. But in the world there is never just one way of living. It's more like a big junkyard. Put it this way: I'm not afraid I'm going to end up on a space station in aluminium-foil underwear.

Life isn't about how popular you are. What girl or boy you are dating or who you know. Life is about always being true to who you are or what you believe in. Never let anyone convince you that their way is better than your way. In the end all we have is our hearts.. and our minds. This is the reason we sing.. this is the reason we cry... this is why we live.

My kids learned to color on this table. There's been a lot that's went around this table. Waylon Jennings sat right there in that chair and showed Miley the chords to 'Good Hearted Woman.' Sitting in that chair. This table's a bit like life. It's a circle. And I believe everything in life is a circle. You come into this world a little teeny wrinkled-up fetus

I feel Icelandic people are really good at gathering together information and brain power. We're better at that than some kind of Las Vegas money gambling. I mean, I really admire the characteristics in Icelandics, this adventureism. We are famous for it. We are addicted to risk to the point of being foolhardy. And I think that is great in brain power stuff.

There's so many amazing articles coming out all the time and because of the internet circulating great writing - even if the writers don't get paid enough most of the time, unfortunately - but there's never been a more amazing flow of information on all of the issues. I would love to see a revival of what we had against the war in the '60s - we could do thes

My family knew I was gay when I was 15, long before I got famous. But it's a very different thing coming out to your family and coming out to the universe. That's a big step. Maybe without me, there wouldn't be Adam Lambert. Without Bowie, there wouldn't be me. Without Quentin Crisp, there wouldn't have been Bowie. So everything is part of a big daisy chain.

Unless you're a true prodigy, you're going to have to practice for a while being bad before you get any good. And it will seem like a waste of time. I remember that feeling well. But don't worry about wasting time, because it'll be so worth it. It's my experience that in the end, life lessons and guitar lessons begin to blur in all sorts of interesting ways.

When I'm on stage, I feel like a performer for sure. I know people are looking at me and taking pictures. That part's wonderful. But, I live the most boring life away from what you see me on camera doing. The other 300 days out of the year I'm just the most normal person in the universe. I'm a wife. I'm a mother to my doggies. I'm a maid - I clean the house.

When I was younger, definitely getting people to listen to me and believe in me. I think it's hard when you're a young girl in a record label full of male urban artists, which is definitely what Atlantic Records was and still is. Also, getting people to trust a young, female pop star that doesn't just want to be puppeteered was definitely a challenge for me.

You look out into the audience and you see so much joy on people's faces. You make eye contact with people who are almost crying because they can't believe they're seeing the Rumours five back again, they can't believe their eyes. It's almost like a family reunion on stage, there's no angst, there's no animosity, there's just tremendous amount of friendship.

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