Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Things have to hit for the moment. That's one of the reasons I'm into video; the image has to hit immediately. I adore video and the whole cutting up of it.
I would like to believe that people knew what they were fighting for and why they wanted a revolution, and exactly what it was within that they didn't like.
For me a chameleon is something that disguises itself to look as much like its environment as possible. I always thought I did exactly the opposite of that.
There was a time in America not long ago when rock 'n' roll was called race music, and white kids who wanted to go see Chuck Berry were completely forbidden.
I think Lindsay Kemp really introduced me to the work of Jean Genet, and through that, I kind of kept re-educating myself about other prose writers and poets.
I felt I really wanted to back off from music completely and just work within the visual arts in some way. I started painting quite passionately at that time.
You should turn around at the end of the day and say I really like that piece of work, or that piece of work sucked. Not, was that popular or wasn't it popular?
I feel that what I do is always contemporary with the society I'm living in... If I wanted to explain myself, that's how I'd explain myself: that I'm a diarist.
I have all the admiration in the world for somebody like Bono, who really puts himself on the line and tries actively to do something about our world situation.
I could imagine at a certain age, when I have no vocal cords left, that I would find a young man who could sing my parts for me. But I don't see why I would stop.
When it comes down to it, glam rock was all very amusing. At the time, it was funny, then a few years later it became sort of serious-looking and a bit foreboding.
The Americans at heart are a pure and noble people; things to them are in black and white. It's either 'rawk' or it's not. We Brits putter around in the grey area.
I don't believe in proper cinema; it doesn't have the strength of television. People having to go out to the cinema is really archaic. I'd much rather sit at home.
To not be modest about it, you'll find that with only a couple of exceptions, most of the musicians that I've worked with have done their best work by far with me.
Anxiety and spiritual searching have been consistent themes with me, and that figures into my worldview. But I tend to make my songs sound like relationship songs.
Of course, we found out later Syd Barrett had mental problems. But there was something so otherworldly about him. He was hovering, like, six inches above the ground.
I had to resign myself, many years ago, that I'm not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does.
I realized the other day that I've lived in New York longer than I've lived anywhere else. It's amazing: I am a New Yorker. It's strange; I never thought I would be.
Art was, seriously, the only thing I'd ever wanted to own. It has always been for me a stable nourishment. I use it. It can change the way that I feel in the mornings.
It amazes me sometimes that even intelligent people will analyze a situation or make a judgement after only recognizing the standard or traditional structure of a piece.
I don't have a problem with ageing - in fact, I embrace that aspect of it. And am able to and obviously am going to be able to quite easily... it doesn't faze me at all.
There's something about the style of living in the country that they feel, "This is what represents me." So style is about the philosophy of how we create our civilization.
I never could get over the fact that The Pixies formed, worked and separated without America taking them to its heart or even recognizing their existence for the most part.
My mother was a housewife. Both from - well, my father was from a farming family, agricultural family in the north of England. And my mother came from a very working class.
People don't get a chance to think, "Why am I a consumer?" Because the decisions come at them so fast and furiously, they're not [even] given time to think, I am a consumer.
The truest form of any form of revolutionary Left, whatever you want to call it, was Jack Kerouac, E.E. Cummings, & Ginsberg's period. Excuse me, but that's where it was at.
I guess a certain contingent of the musicians in London at the beginning of the '70s were fed up with denim and the hippies. And I think we kind of wanted to go somewhere else.
I surrounded myself with people who indulged my ego. They treated me as though I was Ziggy Stardust or one of my characters, never realising that David Jones might be behind it.
I think that we have created a new kind of person in a way. We have created a child who will be so exposed to the media that he will be lost to his parents by the time he is 12.
I think it all comes back to being very selfish as an artist. I mean, I really do just write and record what interests me and I do approach the stage shows in much the same way.
A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle.
It's odd but even when I was a kid, I would write about 'old and other times' as though I had a lot of years behind me. Now I do, so there is a difference in the weight of memory.
What I like doing is writing and recording and much more on the, I guess, the - on that creative level. It's fun interpreting songs and all that, but I wouldn't like it as a living.
There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It's always been my way of expressing what for me is inexpressible by any other means.
I don't like talk and I don't like talkers. Like Ma Barker. That's what she always said, 'Ma Barker doesn't like talk and she doesn't like talkers.' She just sat there with her gun.
My mother was Catholic, my father was Protestant. There was always a debate going on at home - I think in those days we called them arguments - about who was right and who was wrong.
These are all personal crises, I'm sure, that I manifest in a song format and project into physical situations. You make little stories up about how you feel. It's as simple as that.
There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It's always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.
I think in the '70s that there was a general feeling of chaos, a feeling that the idea of the '60s as 'ideal' was a misnomer. Nothing seemed ideal anymore. Everything seemed in-between.
Dance music is no longer a simple Donna Summer beat. It's become a whole language that I find fascinating and exciting. Eventually, it will lose the dance tag and join the fore of rock.
However, there's no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums.
I went to a middle-class school, but my background is working class. I got the best of both worlds, I saw both classes, so I have a pretty fair idea of how people live and why they do it.
The name Bowie just appealed to me when I was younger. I was into a kind of heavy philosophy thing when I was 16 years old, and I wanted a truism about cutting through the lies and all that.
I was born in London 1947, after the war. A real wartime baby. I went to school in Brixton, and then I moved up to Yorkshire, which is in the north of England. I lived on the farms up there.
I suspect that dreams are an integral part of existence, with far more use for us than we've made of them...The fine line between the dream state and reality is at times, for me, quite grey.
To be taken seriously about doing something creative and probably travel a lot. That was my motivation. I knew I was good, I knew I could write. I also knew you could get laid really easily.
I have found myself deeply, deeply intrigued by the ska-punk scene. It's such an expressive form of popular music, it's so real, it's got so much life: it's the most vital music in the world.
I wish myself to be a prop, if anything, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle for my songs. I would like to colour the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.
Pop stars are capable of growing old. Mick Jagger at 50 will be marvelous - a battered old roue - I can just see him. An aging rock star doesn't have to opt out life. When I'm 50, I'll prove it.
I liked rock music, I kind of moved into that sphere, somehow thinking that somewhere along the line I'd be able to put the two together. And I suppose I very nearly did with the Ziggy character.