Quotes by Dean Wareham - Page 1

Writing a song is a long road. Or it can be.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Long
Song
Writing
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You have to love yourself or you'll never be able to accept compliments from anyone.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Able
Compliment
Love You
Love Yourself
Love Love Yourself Yourself
Accept
Love Yourself Accept
Compliments
To Love
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There's all kinds of ways to be misunderstood, and one of them is via the interview.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Interview
Via
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Galaxie 500 broke up because it was time. We broke up as a result of internal contradictions.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Broke
Contradictions
Internal
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Things can turn ugly so quickly in the music business, especially if you have an unexpected success.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Music Business
Unexpected
Success Business Music
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Great guitar players are a dime a dozen. It is sometimes your very limitations as players that set you apart from the crowd.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Dozen
Apart
Dime
Guitar Players
Limitations
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I know I get a real kick, an emotional charge, out of playing a song I haven't played for 10 years. It just takes you back to that point in your life.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Life Your Song
Charge
Get A Real
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Once you hit 40, being in a band - a committee voting constantly on what you're going to be doing next month - it's more of a challenge. And when you have a kid as well.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Band
Voting
Month
Hit
Constantly
Challenge
Committee
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I have a slightly bourgeois upbringing, I guess. My parents paid for me to go to school, which is nice, but I haven't gotten a dime since then. I have no trust fund. I wish I did.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Bourgeois
Fund
Upbringing
Trust Me Parents
Dime
Trust Fund
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People forget that keeping a band together is hard; man, it's really hard. All the cliches apply about living in each other's pockets; of it being a relationship, a marriage, a family.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Marriage
Band
Pockets
Apply
Cliches
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Rock is periodically pronounced dead by clear rock critics - killed by world music, or by hip-hop, or electronica, or the Backstreet Boys. But if you wait a year, it comes back to life.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Backstreet
Critics
World Music
Life Music World
Electronica
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The road, lyric-wise, is a trap, and a bore. Maybe it's interesting to me, but I don't think it's a connecting thing with other humans. What is there to write about? Truck stops, hotels, clubs?
Dean Wareham / Musician
Clubs
Connecting
Humans
Truck
Bore
Hotels
Trap
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It's hard to imagine the whole punk movement without The Velvet Underground. I toured with them when they did their reunion tour, and no one sounds like that; they are a very unique-sounding band.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Punk
Reunion
Velvet
Tour
Underground
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I've never played in Vegas. I've only been to the airport, but even the airport was exciting. Just flying in, looking out the window, you feel the pull of it, like it's some evil force pulling you in, like Mordor.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Flying
Vegas
Window
Airport
Pull
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The fact I have an education forms my lyrical style, I'm sure. I studied the social sciences, history, stuff like that. I have an interest in politics, which maybe works its way into the songs in small, subtle ways.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Lyrical
Subtle
Studied
Works
Forms
Sciences
Social Sciences
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It's easy enough to foist your music collection on your kids. Lectures are not required; you just play the stuff while they are prisoner in the back seat on a long drive, or softly in the background while eating dinner.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Dinner
Lectures
Prisoner
Music Enough Long
Seat
Required
Softly
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Writing songs does not get any easier, and that might be because I am harder on myself than I was twenty years ago. Hopefully, as we grow older and change, there are fresh topics, new perspectives, or at least there should be.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Song
Writing
Years
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I'm tired of being in a band, but I do want to continue making records and performing, at least a little bit. Making the records isn't always fun. It's fun to be finished with them. Making beautiful things can be quite painful.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Band
Beautiful Things
Finished
Little Bit
Painful
Performing
Records
Tired
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It's a scary question for a musician or songwriter today - what does the future hold? It is a strange time in the music business too; it feels like we are all in some kind of transitional period, stuck between old technology and new.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Technology
Musician
Scary
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The first thing you learn about the music business is that it changes very quickly. You come into it at a certain point and you think you have a handle on it... And then, three years later, the whole thing has been turned upside-down.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Handle
Music Business
Certain Point
First Thing
The First Thing
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I think a lot of bands go on way past the point where they're relevant. Some of them keep doing it because they're making millions of dollars. Or people are afraid - they don't know what else to do. It's scary to get out of a relationship of any kind.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Dollars
Relevant
Scary
Millions Of Dollars
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They didn't teach Nietzsche in the philosophy department at Harvard; philosophy there was strictly analytical stuff and the poetic ramblings of Nietzsche did not belong. And see - you are teaching it in a literature class - so they must have been right.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Class
Philosophy
Teaching
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I've come to see that these politicians that release books - no way are they actually writing those books. Not when they are working fulltime, too. There's no way. That's their name on the book, but it's not their work. I'm sure of that. There's no way.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Release
Politicians
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My favorite Luna disc is our third, 'Penthouse,' a sparkly, moody album that works from track one all the way to track 11. Tom Verlaine of Television and Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab make guest appearances. I am also fond of the final Luna album, 'Rendezvous.'
Dean Wareham / Musician
Moody
Rendezvous
Track
Appearances
Disc
Final
Fond
Guest
Third
Tom
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The thing about interviews is that if someone interviews you, and they're an idiot, then they make you sound like an idiot, too. They ask you stupid questions, and they bring you down to their level. It's tempting to not ever want to talk to anybody, but you can't do that.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Stupid Questions
Tempting
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We are drowning in a sea of Myspace, blather, and too much information. Music is everywhere and nowhere. The independent record store is the solution, a place staffed by friendly (or not) people who are actually paid to weed through this crap and help you find the good stuff.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Independent
Sea
Weed
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My favorite Galaxie 500 album is the first one, 'Today,' recorded in three days at Noise New York and produced by Kramer. It contains my favorite Galaxie 500 songs: 'Temperature's Rising,' 'Tugboat,' and our interpretation of Jonathan Richman's 'Don't Let Our Youth Go to Waste.'
Dean Wareham / Musician
New York
Interpretation
Noise
Rising
Temperature
Waste
Album
Favorite
Contains
First One
Jonathan
Produced
York
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I guess, for me, what started me getting real excited about music was the New York punk and new-wave scene. All those bands looked back to the Velvet Underground and the Stooges and the Modern Lovers as well. But that was back when Television were punk, and the Talking Heads were punk.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Lovers
Punk
Stooges
Talking Heads
Velvet
Music Me New
Heads
Underground
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I don't really listen to the radio anymore, but some of the more contemporary people I like are Stereolab, Spiritualize, Yo La Tengo and Bedhead. There are other things too, like Pavement. They're a great band, with really good lyrics. But generally, I'm not overwhelmed by the state of indie-rock.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Contemporary
Overwhelmed
Pavement
Radio
Good Great People
Anymore
Generally
La
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It's weird being an author because it's different than writing songs. You put so much more of yourself out there to be judged because it's a memoir. So when the reviews come in, they all feel really personal. Some people are just going to hate you no matter what. Personally, I never believe good reviews.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Judged
Memoir
Author
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One of the nice things about being in a band is that you depend on each other for ideas, so it's not all up to me to do everything myself. There's always that fear that you'll run out of stuff. The most difficult part for me is writing lyrics, and that starts to get difficult after you've written, like, 120 songs.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Running
Nice
Song
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I don't pretend to understand him, but I can enjoy him as a poet and comedian. I liked the idea of the eternal return. Sometimes I think that being on tour year after year is an eternal return; you play a certain club in Copenhagen and then ten years later you are back again, traveling the same roads year after year.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Play
Thinking
Years
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My standards are higher than they used to be, I think. They don't necessarily have to make sense, but I certainly work on them a lot harder now -- partly because I do them on the computer, and I print them out and fix them, and print them and fix them over and over again, whereas in the early days I used to just scratch down a few things on a piece of paper.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Pieces
Scratches
Thinking
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I guess I could be singing about Superman, or about Zarathustra coming down from the mountain, but in my mind I was singing about Julian Assange. I wish I could say that Nietzsche inspired my lyrics but all I can honestly say is I was inspired by the graphic design of these '70s paperback covers for Beyond Good & Evil and The Birth of Tragedy and The Gay Science.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Design
Evil
Gay
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It's hard to imagine the whole punk movement without The Velvet Underground. I toured with them when they did their reunion tour, and no one sounds like that; they are a very unique-sounding band. They have a lot of noise, they have a viola, they have a drummer that's standing up, certainly they have influenced my guitar playing, but hopefully after 12 records you start to sound like yourself.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Imagine
Like You
Punk
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Don't be a rock star. I've seen people around me have their lives destroyed by drugs. It just depends on what kind of person you are. Like, some people have a "go" button and a "stop" button, and some people just have the "go" button, meaning that they take drugs and just take more, and more, and more. It could be 6 in the morning and they'll say, "Okay, I have to get more now." I'm not that kind of person.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Morning
Drug
People
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It's not often I get to do a film that turns out good. Plus, there just aren't that many great directors out there. There are a thousand different decisions that need to be made with each script and it's the good directors that can make those decisions. It's a long and complicated process in regards to what looks good on paper. Working on a bad film can be fun too. It can be a good exercise that gets you writing.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Exercise
Fun
Writing
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If I look at my own recordings, I think generally there is a focal point within the song and often it's the instrumental bridge or a guitar solo where we try to do something unexpected, something beautiful or weird, or beautiful because it is weird. And of course I fail half the time, but yes that is the goal, to create even a few seconds of bliss, or sadness. The electric guitar is a great instrument for doing this because it is capable of surprising you. There are so many different sounds available.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Beautiful
Sadness
Song
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It's weird being an author because it's different than writing songs. You put so much more of yourself out there to be judged because it's a memoir. So when the reviews come in, they all feel really personal. Some people are just going to hate you no matter what. Personally, I never believe good reviews. When people tell me they love the book, I just shrug and say, "Yeah, whatever." My shrink says it's all about the love within. You have to love yourself or you'll never be able to accept compliments from anyone.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Believe
Hate
Song
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I am interested in politics but have stayed away from writing overtly political songs, or message songs, because I find it difficult to discuss politics intelligently in a 4-minute song. But I am finding there are ways to get bits and pieces of political thought across without preaching that the people have the power or we shall not be moved. Of course these sentiments have their place too - I'm not knocking Phil Ochs - but that's a different kind of music, songs to play at rallies, not to achieve a state of bliss.
Dean Wareham / Musician
Play
Song
Writing
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Dean Wareham Quotes - Page 1

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