Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I've never written a song that's hopeless. I'm not a hopeless person. I'm crazily optimistic. I crazily see the good in people. I crazily see the way out of a terrible situation. I crazily try to be the diplomat. If there are two warring factions in my life, I want them to agree to disagree at the very least.
I think for a lot of new bands, although they have a lot of opportunity, this music business is not giving them a long-term career. I think there's some terrible stuff that comes out and we are bombarded by likes of The X Factor, Pop Idol and all those programs that I don't really like and I don't approve of.
Women are the real superheroes because they're not just working. They have a life and everything. I'm super lucky because I come home and I don't have to run errands and clean the house and do all that. Some women have all of this to do, too. And they manage and they live longer. How we do that, I don't know.
I went to all the shops in the village looking for work. I didn't have any qualifications. I ended up working in a grocery shop for about a year and then went to a confectioner, where I earned three pounds 10 shillings. I gave the money to my mother and father, but I also managed to save five shillings a week.
You read about that Black Lips/Wavves fight as a spectator and you're like, "Oh man, I'm gonna pick a team to be on! I'm gonna put my two cents in as my status update on my Facebook page" or something. Not to sound like an anti-technology person, but it's just a real drag that people live their lives that way.
I went to the Louvre in Paris, and I saw all the paintings and the Mona Lisa. You don't really see something like that every day. I was looking at it, and everything else in the room just shut out. Like, Leonardo Da Vinci painted this thing - this is unreal that he touched that. It had this crazy effect on me.
I really believed music was going to be a big part of my future, and that's why I took a truck driving job, so I could maintain my singing job at night. I put about 30 hours a week just for singing, going between two churches. And in order to afford that, I had to take a full time job so I could do my passion.
There is a man up in Philadelphia, I've known him for 50 years now, his name is Sid Mark. He does a radio program featuring Frank Sinatra music exclusively - one show for decades, "Friday with Frank," "Saturday with Sinatra," "Sunday with Sinatra," for decades. This is something that is really quite important.
Everybody sees me as a solitary entity but I long to be important to somebody It's a love of fairy tales that drives this guilty wish To walk serenely in front of family to collect my kiss and though this notion is as flawed as any I have learned I'd like to think that like the others, it's something I deserve
Even the mistakes, even everything bad that happened, I wouldn’t change because then I wouldn’t be the person that I am today. The past is the past. I just want to focus on the future, and getting better, not making the same mistakes and just becoming a better person, a better artist. Just a better everything.
I think we all feel incredibly fortunate and grateful that we're still around. We're one of the last punk-rock bands standing. And, to be honest, if we weren't getting paid well, and there weren't these teenagers coming to see it and saying, "... this is good, these guys play hard," we probably wouldn't do it.
When I'm doing a one-on-one with somebody, I have to speak in a language that that person can understand, using a vocabulary that they instantly get, and I always have to feel my way around to figure that out. It's a lot of fun, and it's also really challenging - challenging in a different way from performing.
People appreciate a confident man. They love a strong man, and when it comes to a woman, I don't know if people just expect women not to speak up for themselves or be weak or just always be the follow-behind, but I'm proud that I'm in a generation of leaders. I'm proud that I'm surrounded by very strong women.
I've always loved records, even when I was a kid, my parents would buy me records instead of a lot of the other toys kids got. That's what I wanted. I've been collecting records and DJing my whole life, and I thank my parents for that. They had a big record collection and really imparted the magic of it on me.
So you can have your program, but you also have to be ready to change it immediately because there are certain kinds of people who like certain kinds of songs and they like - some people want to dance when you come out, some people just want to be intimate with you. So you kind of feel your way through a show.
In your eyes the light the heat in your eyes I am complete in your eyes I see the doorway to a thousand churches in your eyes the resolution of all the fruitless searches in your eyes I see the light and the heat in your eyes oh, I want to be that complete I want to touch the light, the heat I see in your eyes
In the music business, to survive for so long, you have to be able to cut off from your emotions sometimes. And being a father, you're faced with that situation. I know that my father was, with me. I understand why he had to be distant, because to rip yourself away, time after time, is almost more devastating.
I basically have needed to go to the piano and give voice periodically to, you know - I'm always afraid to describe it as a kind of therapeutic process, but nevertheless it was a type of unloading that had to occur due to my personal life with my mother's health or just my professional trials and tribulations.
Michael Jackson loved studying the greats. He felt that they could only add to what he did naturally. He was absolutely right. I mean, he studied James Brown for years when he was 10 years old, because the Jackson 5 would open for James. He studied him. He studied Fred Astaire. He loved to watch Fred's movies.
My family, although they're very large on both my parents' sides, they don't know much about their family tree. Occasionally, they try to dig, but they can't get very far, and it's baffling. In Dublin, it seems that so many public records were wiped out; it's proven to be very difficult, so I know very little.
When we got married - almost 10 years ago now - we made a commitment to really be together, which means we hardly ever spend a night apart. And being madly in love is important, but I think it's equally important to be in deep like! I like this guy... we talk about everything, and we laugh a lot. Life is good!
I love Osho. I don't know if you would call him a philosopher; I would just call him a really cool dude. Osho really changed my life. Because the way that he spoke about emotion and the male and female energies in the world and how people react to the world around them, it's so simple, yet it has such a depth.
My favorite parts are definitely the traveling. Getting to see all the places that we've been is really amazing to me, [as well as] getting to meet all the people that we wouldn't normally meet. It's really awesome, because we really get to know their culture and see what it's like in other places in the world.
I think a part of it was the way my parents raised me. I think that's part of being raised in a big Latin family. To get an adult's attention you have to do something crazy, and my way was dancing on tables and singing and dancing. That was my way of getting everyone's attention. I'm loud and I like being loud.
I've been blessed from the very beginning with the large gay audience, and I'm flattered. They always have the best taste anyways and are at the forefront of fashion, music, and style. So I'm really happy about that and very flattered. It's a good following to have because it means you're doing something right.
When you set out to carry on a tradition as deep rooted as folk music is, you've got to have your story together. You've got to study and have a foundation. Jeffrey Foucault has that foundation, and you can hear it in his voice, and feel it in his music. He's got an understanding that you don't hear that often.
I'd like to have kids and a wife, and you know, drop them off at school and like, do normal things rather that constantly being on tour. Because I'm young now and I haven't really got a social life. This is all I do. It's the best job in the world, but I'll get to the point where there's more to life than work.
It's easier to keep your stuff then it is to expose it, because some people don't get it. At the cross, at the feet of Jesus, there were some people who said, "Good! I'm glad that you're dead." Then there were some that were crying and saying, "Why are you doing this to this innocent man?" It is not easy to do.
The problem with the Dorises and the Nicki Minajes and Mileys is that they reach their goal very quickly. There is no long-term vision, and they forget that once you get into that whirlpool, then you have to fight the system that solidifies around you in order to keep being the outsider you claim you represent.
I remember going foraging for breakfast in St. Louis once. I saw this one girl sitting in front of the venue, and she made this pink T-shirt with a big heart in the middle of it and a misty picture of our guitarist Mark [Potter]. She was so embarrassed when she saw me. And I was trying desperately not to laugh.
Miami is nothing like me, and that's why I need to be here - it's the opposite. I'm practical, where this place is moody, I'm stolid in my interior, where this place has a certain flair, and I'm materialistic in a sense that this place is fundamentally spiritual - there's a quicksilver quality about this place.
This album - Pain Medicine - is diverse enough and healing enough to help people get through real life sh*t whether it be through laughing at a dude because he's wack in the bed or it be through a record like when crying is easy where you explore what isn't in life that will make you happy. Real recognize real.
I auditioned for a solo in church and got it. I was about seven and I sang a song called, 'Jesus, I Heard You Had a Big House' and I remember people standing up at the end and me thinking, 'Oh, I think I'm going to like this.' That's how it all began. Sounds funny to say you got your start in church, but I did.
I've been talking a lot about how music chooses you because you can pinpoint when you had the epiphany that, 'Wow, I really want to do this.' But there's no real rhyme or reason about choosing to be in this industry. It's one of those things where there is no real guarantee; there is no real rulebook to follow.
Something that I don't normally tell, and it's not necessarily because I wanna keep it from anybody - I just don't think about it - but one thing about me that not a whole lot of people know and that never really gets brought up is that I actually don't have a driver's license. I've never taken a driver's test.
[My House By The Water] is a nice instrumental track. The sound of the water is from the same place where the front photo was taken. I live really close to the airport, so there's also planes going over. It's kind of to remind me of living in there, because I'm not gonna be living in there for very much longer.
I first started going to shows when I was about 16 - seeing local bands. I mean, I loved music before that, and I played a bit of guitar when I was younger and thought maybe I'd become a guitar teacher or something, but when I saw other kids doing it, I was like, 'Whoa, these are great bands! I can do it, too.'
You know, when I was in love, I was always inventing things. A whole array of tricks, illusions and optical effects to amuse my lady friend. I think she'd had enough of my inventions by the end... I wanted to create a voyage to the moon just for her, but what I should have given her was a real journey on earth.
To put things back into perspective, back when we as people were struggling to survive through winters, or even through the night, I feel like there's a lot of whining about whether or not you use Asian or the words Asian or Oriental, and how it's going to offend somebody, I mean give me - I mean, just shut up.
I've always known that I was a gifted person. ... I've always felt like I would be punished, severely, if I didn't continue to make use of that gift. It's very important that you don't let the muscle get flabby. It's really hard, as an old human being, to press as much weight as you pressed when you were a kid.
If you're in pop music, you've got to deal with the changing of the guard every few years. By the time the '70s arrived, I was well aware of the cyclical nature of the game. Pop music is a creature of the moment; it thrives on the mood of its time. Either you hook into that or you're not going to be part of it.
The UN Declaration of Human Rights laid down what any person might reasonably expect, yet there are remarkably few people who enjoy these rights. With cameras in the hands of activists and meaningful distribution of those images, we will witness what really goes on in this world and hopefully want to change it.
Coming from a single parent household, I witnessed firsthand the strength and courage of the single mother. I always had my father in my life but my household was run by my mother and my grandmother. As a result, I have always had the utmost respect for women and have chosen to strongly convey that in my music.
I think you have a certain level of confidence in what you do. "Arrogance" is the wrong word. I think when you go into it, you're aware that you're doing it for the right reasons - and you have your own moral and ethical code. And we weren't driven by money, but by a a desire to make music and make a statement.
I think fashion is repulsive. The whole idea that someone else can make clothing that is supposed to be in style and make other people look good is ridiculous. It sickens me to think that there is an industry that plays to the low self-esteem of the general public. I would like the fashion industry to collapse.
The Metropole Orchestra is like Count Basie or Duke Ellington with strings... it's strings that swing. Strings that swing like Dizzy Gillespie... keep swinging, baby. And when you have all of that special excellence of the Metropole Orchestra, then your music just flies - it soars in a way that's really magical.
I need a hero, I'm holding out for at hero 'till the end of the night He's gotta be strong and he's gotta be fast And he's gotta be fresh from the fight I need a hero, I'm holding out for a hero 'till the morning light He's gotta be sure and it's gotta be soon And he's gotta be larger than life, larger than life
People have been listening to Burning Spear for a long time now, and they know who I am and what I stand for. Yes, I do address many of the same ideas from album to album, adding only a little different flavor or coloring. Yes, the message has remained virtually the same because the issues haven't gone away yet.
Like everyone else in the world, I've been devastated by the loss and suffering of so many in South Asia....As a mother, I cannot imagine the pain that they are experiencing. We can all see that it's going to take a long time for those people to rebuild their lives, and they will need our help for years to come.
A couple of years ago my friend and business partner Jeffrey Richards was doing the Gore Vidal play, The Best Man, starring James Earl Jones. I asked Jeffrey out to lunch and asked him what he thought of James playing Grandpa in You Can't Take It With You. Jeffrey thought it was a fabulous idea and so did James.