Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Most guys my age are boring human beings. They sit in bars, get drunk, and then go home to tell their kids the way to rule their lives, while they're absolutely stewed out of their brains.
I had been reading this book about Zen Koan philosophy, and it was talking about the right here and the right now, and how important it is, and I was really trying to get there in my life.
When we were on the road, I found out that my greatest hits album went Gold. They freaked out. Things really came to a head when we started arguing about a Van Halen greatest hits package.
I grew up watching MTV, so it's very surreal to me to think that there might be someone out there watching MTV, looking at us the way I used to look at Davis Madonna and Duran Duran videos.
I think there are certain genres of music where people are allowed to go on, but there is something about rock and roll, I guess because it originally started out to be a teenage rebellion.
Chanting just hits you and you want to be a part of it. That’s the point of this whole thing. That’s what cuts through all the ‘stuff’. You get lit up. You don’t have to know what it means.
Occasionally, I go off the rails. I once nearly killed somebody once - it wasn't funny. I am a lunatic. The pressure of work, the pressure - everyone has a stop valve, and I don't have one.
We've been polarizing for different reasons. For one thing, my voice is very polarizing. It sits in this place that either appeals to people or really puts people off. I can understand that.
I've always loved that, on all the Dylan and Springsteen and Marley and Neil Young reissues that they've done: It's so cool to hear alternate versions and how the song started in their mind.
For me, the difference between a musician reading an arrangement on a piece of paper, and them closing their eyes and listening to what's happening around them and responding to it, is huge.
We have quite a few political songs: 'Channel Z,' let's 'Keep This Party Going' on. Our lyrics aren't too hit-you-over-the-head, but they have political undertones. We're active politically.
I figured if you want to get to where John Hammond is or Billy Gibbons is or Peter Wolf is, you have to start listening to the same stuff they did, and learn from that, and that's what I did.
When we arrive at eternity's shore Where death is just a memory and tears are no more We'll enter in as the wedding bells ring Your bride will come together and we'll sing, 'You're beautiful'
We were all anti-Reagan, we were all politically-aware, we were all anti-war and things like that. These days a lot of the newer bands don't even really talk about that sort of stuff anymore.
I think a lot of times we think of music as being different from other art forms. You would never ask a sculptor or painter, 'Go paint this because you'll get paid more,' you know what I mean?
Did you know that the percentage of young people in the crucial 'youthquake' age bracket of 15 to 24 was higher in 1973 than in 1967 ? Therefore it was glam rock that ended the war in Vietnam.
I'm floored! Tony Rettman's NYHC is by far one of the most informative looks at New York hardcore. An amazing read loaded with remnants of my life and a movement I truly adore. Hardcore lives!
In theater and dance, I was trying to win someone's approval, trying to get in, trying to be good. It felt out of my control, whereas music suddenly felt like this free expression. It was fun.
I probably won't be able to hear it until five years from now anyway. That's when I always hear my own music. It takes five years to sit down with it after not hearing it for a couple of years.
My aunt played upright bass in the Louisville Orchestra, and I was always really impressed by her musical ability. I found it really fascinating as a kid that one could play music for a living.
If you do something, you should do it because you love it, and you should follow your heart and make it how your heart wants it to be made. But it's a difficult world, especially for musicians.
It takes me a lot of time, and it's almost frustrating for the guys sometimes because they're waiting for a new song. And I - it's just so important for me to get the perfect, exact, right song.
I can't do one thing at a time. If I'm writing song lyrics, I've got to be doing the ironing or cooking or something while I'm working. If I just sit there and stare at the walls, I get nothing.
Kind of the sad thing is that - it's still true - a lot of jazz people just listen to jazz, and a lot of hip-hop people just listen to hip-hop, and there's not a lot of crossover, unfortunately.
With my recovery programme, I have to do a daily inventory of how my day has been. I am terribly dyslexic and have attention deficit disorder, so I have to carry a tape recorder everywhere I go.
The music industry's actions at the time of 9/11 and since have been actions driven by patriotism in most instances, and greed and stupidity to a lesser degree. Sounds like real life doesn't it?
But we didn't have the financial structure, like the right attorneys, the right managers, the right accountants, and we were going against the grain of what black entertainers is supposed to do.
Looking down on it from the helicopter, with a bottle of Jack in my left hand, a bag of pills in my right hand, and a blond head bobbing up and doen in my lap, I felt like the king of the world.
If you look at the other singers of Billie Holiday's time, they were really trying to entertain. They were trying to make people feel good. They were singing fast - and she was singing the blues.
I remember seeing Tony Bennett on television. He was the only guy in the orchestra who was wearing a white tux, and I thought, 'That would be good. To be the only man on stage in a white jacket.'
The other thing is that women my age know that looks are only skin deep. They don't matter. What matters is who you are. Hopefully at the end of the day, you're a good person. That's what counts.
Look at Neil Diamond. Was he the cool guy? No, he was the housewives' guy. He didn't try to be what he wasn't. He just did what he did - made great music, was a good entertainer, nice-enough guy.
I wasn't writing the music. Ed would write a piece of music. I'd listen to it and come up with a melody and then we would arrange it. We'd put it together and I would write lyrics to my melodies.
The world is not looking for Stepford-type Christians. People are tired of pretense. We struggle with failures; we long for intimacy. So why are we feigning perfection before God and one another.
I'm out doing my deal, I'm turning people on. What's wrong with taking people away from their everyday mundane situation and having a good, fun night for an hour and a half at a rock'n'roll scene?
I’m not a scholar or a psychologist, so I don’t really think about why. But I do think about what it means to sing to and with people, to offer music to them, and to ask them to spend time with me.
The 'Burials' title really speaks to all the different levels that are on the record. It speaks to silence and panic and anxiety and loss of self and isolation and those different levels of hiding.
There are a good number of people creating black metal and black metal inspired music in the northwest. Much of this music is radically noncommercial and exists only on a very local, private level.
If I would have ever dreamed that I wouldn't be in Van Halen anymore and was going to have resume my solo career again, I would have never contributed anything towards my own greatest hits package.
An album represents an artist or a band or a group of musicians at any given moment in time. You just produce the music that you feel good about and hope that the audience shows some interest in it.
When I was maybe three years old, I was obsessed with this song 'Leader of the Band' by Dan Fogelberg. My mom took me to the mall and bought me a 45 of it. We would listen to that song all the time.
I have a zombie apocalypse kit at my house. I've got freeze dried food, I've got a real deal medical kit, like, a doctor could perform a surgery with this medical kit. I got all kinds of everything.
I look at my little ones and I love them so much. I think to myself, "By God, if my son is gay, it's not that he was turned or learned into it. My son, his soul, the way he was born ... this is him.
I didn't really like the taste of booze. I liked the effect it did on me. But I can't say I savored a glass full of Chablis Chablis 1932. I drank whatever s - - was in front of me and got me buzzed.
Pedialyte's a super-Gatorade that they give infants when they're dehydrated. It's on all our riders now. Drink a liter of grape Pedialyte and no hangover. The guys from Pantera taught us that trick.
If you think about it, if you've ever been to a Catholic service, it's practically a laser light show. It's very dramatic, very theatrical. The outfits they wear, it's all designed to be impressive.
It's a spirit that was given me and the relationships and meeting all these great people, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong; through Max I met a lot of people too. My first album was with Benny Carter.
Sometimes mistakes are the best thing that can happen, because they might lift you...out of your complacency, and open your mind up to a whole other area that you wouldn't have gone to intentionally.
I always loved reading. I always was the spelling bee champion. I always loved words. I always wanted to know what they meant, why you used them, who first said them. I was always interested in that.
I like bold statements. I'm very nearsighted, and I'm terrible at the whole contacts thing. I figured, 'Why not get some glasses that are fun, that contrast with my skin tone and brighten things up.'