Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Weirdly, I was still trying to be the older brother, and trying to get him [Tom Berninger] to try to be more like me a little bit. Or not be more like me but... I was frustrated that he sometimes let things stop him in his life, and he let the wind get knocked out of his sails a few times.
At the end of the day, for people in this position, you just need to make something that feels like you're expressing yourself honestly, something that you'd want to listen to. The rest of the aesthetic is kind of bullshit, and I don't mean that in a negative way - just that it's a choice.
I've dealt with losing close ones before, and I've been around friends that have lost friends at a young age. I think it's important to think about - not necessarily death, but about life and think about where you're going and how you want to be remembered and the legacy you want to leave.
The first thing you have to do is take everything with a grain of salt. You know, you've gotta just look at the goal, focus on what you gotta do and take one step at a time as a whole, as every performance being that's it, that's one objective, and let's just move forward and work on that.
I was kicked off a record label and didn't get picked up again. It was devastating at first because I thought, 'Oh my God. My career is over. What's gonna happen? What am I going to do?' Once I got that I could have a career, a very good career, without having a hit record, then I changed.
When I'm writing, I separate from everyone. Even my band. I push myself, and I'm alone with my thoughts. Separating from friends and comforts and family lets you think a lot deeper about subject matter. Working alone drives me a little crazy, but it makes the writing as honest as possible.
I just wanted to do my own thing after The Murderdolls. The Murderdolls were so spread out all across the US that we couldn't just say, "Let's go rehearse." For us we had like four days to rehearse because everyone had to book flights, so we just never got as tight as most bands should be.
Music - special magic that communicates feelings and sensitivities that are human and what is so wonderful about the art. Let your kids get involved in the arts and study this workshop of human sensitivities, sadness, joy, happiness and aware of sadness and joy and happiness in their lives.
I love to look good - I love to get glammed up - but it's not the most important thing in my world, and I'm not afraid to not be perfect. I can see where there is a lot of pressure 'cause we live in a very visual world, but I try to go a bit deeper than that. Things are just more important!
When you go through tragedy, you can either let that destroy you and you become bitter and never let it go, or you can let it make you stronger and let it make you grow. And that's what I did. My lyrics are coming from a place that I want people to relate to and feel that they're not alone.
Sadly, I do my homework. I've a soft spot for the boring minutiae. I read the Charter of the United Nations before meeting with Kofi Annan. I read the Meltzer report, and then I'll read C. Fred Bergsten's defense of institutions like the World Bank and the I.M.F. It's embarrassing to admit.
Music and literature have always and continue to be massive influences. Writers such as Seamus Heaney and Frank McGuinness. I have always admired the humanitarians that I knew growing up in Derry whose influence steered me in the direction of some of the work that I have chosen in the past.
Some people see life as many steps up and try to forget where they are coming from, you understand? A little step in life on a commercial or a material level is a good step, but a big step does not mean a strong step - you tend to lose your roots - and if you don't be careful, you can fall.
My political ideas and things like that, even my religion, I try to keep close to me because it's a personal thing, and I don't shove it down people's throats. I don't condemn any artist that wants to do that, like the Baldwins. That's their choice. But in my world, I'm just an entertainer.
The first time I ever recorded, which was into my boom-box, I was like, 'Wow, check that out.' It sounded great. The narcotic of it was so intense - it was pleasurable. I was like, 'You sound like a band.' Then I ended up spending the rest of my life trying to chase that initial high again.
First of all, [St. Stephen's] is a radical church. It was one of the first DC churches to have gay ceremonies. A woman said mass there, which almost got a priest excommunicated there; Black Panthers spoke at the church; it was a sanctuary for civil rights protesters and anti-war protesters.
I think women sometimes stop flirting with their husbands, and you can't. Men want to want feel good - they want to feel like their women love them. When they come home from work, don't start nagging them with questions. Go up to them and give them a big kiss and ask them how their day was.
Maybe primitive people have less bullshit to let go of, to give up. A person has to be willing to give up everything—not just wealth. All the bullshit he's been taught—all society's brainwashing. You have to let go of all that to get to the other side. Most people aren't willing to do that.
I get on the airplane and there's a screen in front of everything. You get into a taxicab in New York, there's a screen blinking at you. I think it's going to have a tremendous effect on our brains, because those bright, saturated colors and those strong lines, they do things to your brain.
Honesty works against you in the entertainment field. I try to be a journalist and a documentarian, but that doesn't mean that people are going to embrace it at the moment. The point is I'm leaving the mark of my hysteria and the political hysteria, and that's it... I can only do what I do.
Once I started to make the transition to guitar - because I was playing keyboards when we started the band - I was trying to figure out riffs I could play without really having a lot of knowledge. And my dad ended up showing me Black Sabbath's 'Heaven and Hell,' because he knew I loved Dio.
Of all the unhappiness I went through, you must know I wouldn't live a moment of my life differently for what I have now. Would I do it all again? I wouldn't want to, but if it got me to the same place, yeah, I'd do it. Because I realize now that God would not give more than I could handle.
In the late '80s and early '90s, there was a slightly retro drum sound that was popular in hip-hop music called the 808 bass drum sound. It was the bass drum sound on the 808 drum machine, and it's very deep and very resonant, and was used as the backbone as a lot of classic hip-hop tracks.
The likes of Bob Dylan and David Bowie and probably Elvis Presley or any of the Beatles, none of them would have got through Pop Idol, because they're not conventional. They're not what people think is popular now. I like the individuality in people. I don't want everyone to sound the same.
Try to remember the kind of September When life was slow and oh so mellow. Try to remember the kind of September When grass was green and grain was yellow. Try to remember the kind of September When you were a tender and callow fellow. Try to remember and if you remember then follow follow.
I have seen that our best presidents were the do-nothing presidents: Millard Fillmore, Warren G. Harding. When you have a president who does things, we are all in serious trouble. If he does anything at all, if he gets up at night to go the bathroom, somehow, mystically, trouble will ensue.
I was singing doo-wop on the corner under the streetlight with four other guys when it wasn't called doo-wop. We just got together and sang, so that music is inside of me. It's a lot of stuff that has been rolling around in here and becoming this compost and has made me who I am as a singer.
I first heard "Heaven Without a Gun" when Kevin [Drew] sent it to me, and there was this kind of beauty about it. I don't live that much in the literal world, so you kind of have to see beyond the veil of what you're being shown sometimes. To me, that's such a beautiful, wonderful sentiment.
Every day I remind myself of all that I have been given... With singing, you never know when you are going to lose the voice, and that makes you appreciate the time that you have when you are still singing well. I am always thanking God for another season, another month, another performance.
Well we never set out to write a concept album. I've always used song writing as a therapeutic release so in that process, I just do my best to be honest with myself and look inside myself and whatever comes out usually just reflects or depicts what I'm going through in my life at that time.
In the mid-1980s to the early 1990s I was writing songs not because I particularly liked what I was doing, but because I was desperately trying to get back into the charts. I really didn't enjoy it. I didn't like the music I was making, I wasn't proud of it, like I have been before or since.
I made more money yesterday than I ever thought I'd make in an entire lifetime. But it's like somebody's going to take it all away from me and I'll be back in Texas, installing them damned irrigation wells. I didn't like that when I was sixteen. And I know I wouldn't like it when I'm eighty.
I am fussy, about my diet and straining my voice. I know, sounds a bit over the top. But I'm not as bad as I used to be. These days I don't drink alcohol for five days before a show - very dehydrating for the vocal cords, and all that acid reflux. I used to ban it for a fortnight. Nightmare.
I've definitely, you know, been with women. And I've had great relationships with them where I was definitely in love. It's just I grew to a point where deep inside I knew that I could never truly have a relationship with a woman. I don't know if they ever suspected. It was never brought up.
As far as I'm concerned, collaboration is the essence of life. It's wonderful to be able to have talents, and, very often, we think that we know what our talents are, or we find out through a back door that we have a talent. I know that I found out I was a lyricist quite through a back door.
I didn't know why I couldn't sing - all I knew was that it was muscular or mechanical. Then, when I was diagnosed with Parkinson's, I was finally given the reason. I now understand that no one can sing with Parkinson's disease. No matter how hard you try. And in my case, I can't sing a note.
A man in Mali told me that there are seven senses. Everyone has five, some can use their sixth. But not everyone has the seventh. It is the power to heal with music, calm with color, to soothe the sick soul with harmony. He told me that I have this gift, and I know what I have to do with it.
I've got to sing for Pops; I've got to keep my father's legacy alive because he started all of this. So I started calling people, and nobody would give me a chance, but I didn't let that stop me. I took money out the bank and I started making me a record, and I did it in this guy's basement.
Cooking is about presenting flavors and other aspects of food in a way that makes best use of them and makes an engaging, satisfying meal. Taste necessarily comes into it along with technique. Some ingredients require cooking, cleaning or otherwise denaturing them, some are fine as they are.
When you're younger, you see the people who are in power and think they must have that position because of some degree of skill. And as you get older, you realize it's not true, that most people in those positions are absolutely inept. And this naturally makes you feel better about yourself.
I'm the original hunter-down-of-fabulous-things. Twenty years ago I sat down and decided that I would create a really wonderful image, an unforgettable image. And now I'm kind of stuck with it. It's like when I don't wear my fringy, gypsy stuff, people kind of look at me like, 'What's wrong?
That's a real secret. You can trust God. I feel I love the Lord with all of my heart, and he will not put more on me than I can bear. And so I always say, 'Lord, I trust you with me.' So I figure, anything that happens in my life, I must be able to bear it, or he wouldn't allow it to happen.
If the selection process is right and its members GOOD, then there could be no reason why the collection of the teammates be not BETTER and bright who would work in the BEST interest of the organization, either individually or jointly, to bring sustainability in achieving newer growth height.
Being a musician, especially at the major label where you work for so long, it becomes a cycle. Write a record, make a record, tour. It's just this cycle, and I don't think there's any life built into it with time to assimilate what's going on in front of you and what's going on in your head.
I think that I learned music. And also you learn recommendations that you can use in your life. When you travel, you all the time remember what your mother teach you. You know in the African family the mother has a big role to play because the father is outside in the fields or going to work.
Growing up in Nashville, especially in a music business family, means growing up with knowledge that seems like common sense until later in life when you realize people spend thousands of dollars a semester trying to learn or pretending to learn while looking for some intern job on music row.
My big thing is to get onstage sober. Whatever happens from there happens. But you get onstage drunk and it's not going to be good. It takes a while. I have to sing a lot, so I can only drink so much. So most nights it's fine; even if I drink as much as I possibly can, I can't get that drunk.
There was a period of time when I first moved to Nashville, like the first couple of years, that I was just simply lost. I didn't know who I was; I didn't know really what I was doing here. I was meant to be a singer, but I just felt lost. That's when I went on the search for my birth family.
I'm very lucky in the sense that I've got a voice that's distinctive. Not good, but distinctive. That's a very useful thing to have in this business. I'm glad on the one hand that I've got it, but I wish it was more powerful. I wish I had a greater range. I wish it was more accurate at times.
For some reason, I can inspire things that are in good taste, but then sometimes I can also inspire, like, wooooow. Some producers have this really sexual idea, and they're like, "Now I can do this, with her!" And I will just go: non, non, non. That's not me, it's you. You're projecting, man.