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A record is a commodity, but so is a hamburger. Just because I work at McDonald's doesn't mean I reap the benefits of that commodity. That's the reality with most artists in the record industry: They're getting paid a subsistence wage so they can keep producing a commodity for the record label.
If you are going to be serving a living thing, you have to honor that living thing with some kind of care and thought and preparation to rationalize the taking of that life in some way. Where if you're just grinding up hamburger at McDonald's, I see that as a bit of an affront to living things.
A city is where you can sign a petition, boo the chief justice, fish off a pier, gaze at a hippopotamus, buy a flower at the corner, or get a good hamburger or a bad girl at 4 A.M. A city is where sirens make white streaks of sound in the sky and foghorns speak in dark grays. San Francisco is such a city.
Whenever possible, I use local, fresh ingredients, just because it tastes and feels better to eat an egg or a tomato or a hamburger that wasn't flown halfway around the world, that didn't travel on a truck and get stuck in traffic jams, that hasn't been sitting in a supermarket's refrigerator case for days.
One way I deal with stress is when I feel a certain way, I just do it. It's like, I want a hamburger, so I'm just going to eat a hamburger. I don't want to answer your phone call right now - I'm not going to answer your phone call. Just be able to say, 'This is how I feel. This is the way it is, deal with it.'
You can't take a congressman to lunch for $25 and buy him a hamburger or a steak or something like that. But you can take him to a fund-raising lunch and not only buy him that steak, but give him $25,000 extra and call it a fund-raiser - and have all the same access and all the same interactions with that congressman.
I lived at the Gramercy Park Hotel for about 10 years. It was terrific. It was a pleasantly run-down hotel of the '70s and '80s with a mix of older, rent-controlled apartment dwellers, Europeans and new wave and punk bands. The room service was great, the hamburger was terrific, and they had a doctor who made house calls.
Hindered by asthma since I was six weeks old, I had begun experimenting with my diet and discovered a disquieting correlation. When I stopped eating the normal American diet of sugar, fats, alcohol, chemicals, and additives, I felt better. I could breathe freely. When I tried to sneak in a hamburger and a Coke, my body rebelled.
Everybody wants instant gratification for everything. It's all got to be like fast food. You want a hamburger now, you get it now. Hey, even when McDonald's started out, it took them a couple of minutes to make your burger and get it to you. Now, it's all wham, bam. That's tough enough on a burger. It's impossible with a relationship.
If you are too overwhelmed, then when you sit down and try to write something, it feels forced. There's nothing worse than forced music. I mean, this world has enough of that right now, where it's basically McDonald's making music. 'Everybody needs another hamburger and fries.' Here's a piece of crap that nobody's gonna care about it two years.
'Baywatch' sucks so bad. I didn't watch it the first time around; I'm sure not going to buy a DVD. But really, you just kind of find out the categories of what's most foolish about these people. With Hasselhoff, it's obviously the huge man-tits with chest hair, probably a lot about his crappy acting, obviously the hamburger video - that's huge.