Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I am a candid interview and I have a dark and dry sense of humor - a very Canadian sense of humor and I am only learning now stupidly that you can't read tongue. When I say something funny in a newspaper and I meant it to be funny, it doesn't read that way.
It's really important to be free and be open and honest about the things you want to do. Just 'cause you want to make a solo record or another record with another band, it doesn't have to be an insult or a slight to the band you've been with for a long time.
I want to break down the wall of, you know, you have to put on a jacket and tie, and you have to act a certain way, and you have to know how to order the right kind of wine. All these things have suddenly been built up around jazz and the way it's presented.
My compositions are, I would say, like pages ripped from a diary that I don't really want to share, but that I almost feel the need to share. It's a way for me to get things out that I can't get out in life, you know, in real regular conversation with people.
I'd write songs like 'One Big Holiday,' and we'd play it and say, 'It's too heavy for 'At Dawn.' Let's save it for the next one.' We had more time for that, but when you mix a song, the general rule of thumb for us is a song a day or usually a day and a half.
Medical research has shown that when an 8 week old human foetus is pricked in the palm of his hand by a needle, he opens his mouth and pulls his hand away. There is also an increase in heart rate as a result. This shows that an 8 week old foetus can feel pain
No, I will never do another Rainbow album. I'll never ever do that again. I want no part in doing it; I want no part in doing anything with Ritchie at all. I respect him. He's a genius. He was a great part of my life, but I don't need to go through that hell.
Real compassion is not emotional. Real compassion is based on the experience that all beings, which might appear separate, are actually a part of my own body, and I am a part of the body of the universe. We are not separate. So if one being hurts, I also hurt.
When you meet your guru or a being who knows, who is no longer loving, but has become love, a being who is sitting in truth, and in compassion and kindness for all beings - you know. When I met my guru, I knew. And it was before I met him physically, actually.
I see that I have been engaged to Emily [Blunt] without ever asking her. The big question I had was, do you think I would ask her to marry me through 'Hello' magazine? Would I do something like that? Would she allow that to happen? It is completely ridiculous.
In a band with humor, it's easy to be a caricature, especially when you've been around as long as we have. But we sing those songs as genuine as we can, always from the heart. When we do the fish sounds in 'Rock Lobster,' Cindy and I are pouring our hearts out.
There are men and women still on the streets, and that's all they are saying Can you spare a quarter? I come from a crowd of people who were current on the outlook on life, who were social and knew where they were and had some input into how things seemed to be.
Jazz in the 1920s and '30s was dance music, teenage music for parties, for being wild and young. There's this punk feeling I really love. It was something so radical and different and new and not codified. People didn't have a definition of what they were doing.
I'm not a jazz musician, because, I mean, firstly, I can't play anything. I'm not bad on the tamborine. I have a certain way with the triangle. But I'm not a jazz musician ... my band, they always joke, they always say that I'm a disposable, pop, jazz superstar.
Then I came up with this crazy idea just to walk out on the stage with no band at all and just start singing whatever came to mind. I actually fought the idea for a while because it seemed almost too radical, but it became obvious what I was supposed to be doing.
It's not that we don't want to be all over the radio. I'd love to have a hit single. However, I also want to be in the business a long time and longevity is something that we all wanted. In order to have that, you have to be true to what you do and to each other.
If I look back at the songs I was writing when I was effectively a child, there's a big contrast, so I've learnt a lot along the way. I think it's a confidence thing; the biggest thing that's affected me, both in writing and performing, is a growth in confidence.
I'm a co-writer, publisher of that song ["Right Now" ], so for it to get accepted, we had to sign off on it. I signed off in a second. "You bet that anyone can use this. I don't care. You can use it for anything." If it is to inspire people in the positive sense.
Whenever you're talking about meaning, basically... I think a lot of the human experience has to do with trying to understand what things mean, and there's not really any tools to do that unless you're thinking about it in a more spiritual or philosophical realm.
I was nervous during Radiohead, we thought that they would hate us. I think when we played in LA, one of the dudes from Entourage was in the audience, and that was kinda weird. If anyone would make me nervous it would be David Bowie, Neil Young, someone like that.
I actually started the whole project some years ago with a live debut at Ancienne Belgique in Brussels. The focus was mainly on my favorite period of Billie Holiday, which was the late-50s Verve recordings, with essentially a small version of the Count Basie band.
When you're young, you're stupid. You do silly things. I did it (the O-Z-Z-Y tattoo across his knuckles) when I was 14. I was in jail for something. I could have had it removed, but why? It's my trademark. People stop me and say, 'Let me have a look at your hand.'
It was immaterial to me that Elvis didn't write his own songs. Those were very different days, and he selected whatever suited him best from material supplied by publishing houses and teams of writers - all of whom were extremely conscious of his style of delivery.
'What's Going On' is one of the greatest albums ever made. I definitely wasn't aiming to make my 'What's Going On,' you know what I mean? That album is definitely deep in my DNA. I've probably listened to that more than maybe any other album ever in my entire life.
Music is a physical expression that has a physical impact upon the listener. Sound travels in waves through the air. This is not abstract. This is scientific fact. And it makes physical contact with the eardrum... and with the heart... and with the rest of the body.
You can never predict what the specific shape of your life is going to be, and you won't really know its general shape until, God willing, you're advanced in years and you have the time and opportunity to look back in a coherent way and see what your life was about.
I was going through troubles with my marriage, and I was just trying to focus and center myself. I was already rich and famous. I've got to figure out where I want to go and just get this thing aimed. I wrote this song ["Right Now"] and I kept singing it every day .
We grew up listening to so much hardcore: everything from the very early D.C. stuff - Teen Idols, Minor Threat, Dag Nasty, SOA, Government Issue - to bands who weren't straight edge, like Negative Approach. I really feel they were one of the greatest punk bands ever.
I was curious, given the swimming pools of booze I’ve guzzled over the years - not to mention all of the cocaine, morphine, sleeping pills, cough syrup, LSD, Rohypnol… there’s really no plausible medical reason why I should still be alive. Maybe my DNA could say why.
Music didn't really hit me again until the '90s, when the dancehall scene got going. The '90s were perfect for me. I would have really liked to have had The Slits out in the '90s again, to do tours and albums, because I think the '90s was a brilliant decade for music.
That type of autograph, pictures and apparel thievery was not part of what I grew up with. I loved the artists and their music. I would be thrilled to meet them, but the thought of getting a scribble or stealing an article of clothing never occurred or appealed to me.
When you get something like MTV, it's like regular television. You get it, and at first it's novel and brand new and then you watch every channel, every show. And then you become a little more selective and more selective, until ultimately... you wind up with a radio.
I'm very grateful for the other bands and artists that stood up for us with a view to our induction - that's nice of them. But I wish that the Hall Of Fame had had the discretion to ask us first. It's now become a debate in which we are too late to have the final word.
I keep wanting people to realize that there needs to be a tidal wave of peace and love. People should be treated with love and respect regardless of the color of their skin or their sexual preference. We need to keep saying that as much as we can and as loud as we can.
I've just had this idea pop in my head of trying to learn a new song every da, and try and play it that night. That's been fun for me because it's a little bit of a scary adventure, playing a song for the first time in front of people and letting it just be what it is.
There were lots of songs that were on 'It Still Moves' that I had written, and we had played - rehearsed, but also played live a couple of times - that could've gone on 'At Dawn', but we always knew we wanted to make a record that was more quote-unquote 'rock n' roll.'
I'm really proud of you for having come this far - every single one of you, wherever you are, you're on your way - you are getting there! And - don't worry so much! Just - that's what we need to stop doing - stop worrying so much, and start observing a little bit more.
It's a wonderful side effect of what we're doing, to give someone the strength to come out of the closet to their family, or simply present themselves aesthetically in a way they feel happy with, whether or not their friends are going to be allowed to like them anymore.
I always admired Ray Kroc, the man who invented McDonald's. Ray had a vision of the most commonplace thing - a hamburger and fries to go - but to him it was just the greatest thing ever, and he was going to make it the greatest thing ever for everybody else, and he did.
In the late '90s, we kind of took a sabbatical, and I got an invitation to play with a Japanese band and formed a supergroup called NiNa. It was Yuki from Judy and Mary and Masahide Sakuma from The Plastics, a Japanese equivalent of the B-52s. It went to No. 1 in Japan.
A lot of subjects blend into the same thing: intolerance. When you're a little kid, you don't know that it's going to get better. Your life experience hasn't told you that. I want to protect those people. I want to send out a message and at least try to get that across.
I'm grateful to be successful, and I'm grateful that we can make a living, and I hope we can maintain our integrity forever. That's really my only dream. The notion of bigness or smallness, I feel like that comes and goes in such waves that are kind of out of my control.
We've always been a band who wants to put our money where our mouths are. We have political songs, but we don't like to hit people over the heads with stuff. So it's better to do benefits and causes and talk about it later rather than always trying to put it in the song.
I think more people feel like they're outside of the mainstream these days - there's more people who are doing their own thing, feeling that it's not bad to be a weirdo and respecting other people's differences. And all that kind of goes into the big ol' B-52 philosophy.
As I'm getting older a lot of my friends I used to go out and party with, they're all dead. The fact that I've been through that, I'm not proud of the fact that I've been through all that, but it's part of my journey. I'm lucky to be alive. I'm lucky to be playing music.
There were times, I could say, later in the career, that I wished that my voice would be deeper for materials that I might've wanted to select to do. But that's the style of my voice. There's nothing I can do about the height of my voice. And so I learned to deal with it.
I bury my mind in my book, the Bible. Every morning it's the first thing that I do. I've been doing it for years and years. So I want to come back here [to Israel] to see the places that I read about every day. It's very important to my faith to feed [my] spirit in Israel.
There were times, I could say, later in the career, that I wished that my voice would be deeper for materials that I might've wanted to select to do. But that's the style of my voice. There's nothing I can do about the heighth of my voice. And so I learned to deal with it.
There's nothing more fun than feeling frequencies and learning about equipment - everybody should do that. But if you're going to put your heart into an album and you want to give it to the world and add to the conversation, I think it's really important to take your time.
I always freak out when people ask me about my favorite bands or my five favorite records, I just can never do that because it goes through different waves and sometimes you want to listen to something and at other times you want to listen to something else so I don't know.