Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My dad was a blues musician around Dublin when I was a baby, so the only music I would listen to growing up was John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters. It's music that feels like home to me.
I never miss a vote; I think that's the power of the people. A lot of people fought and died for us to have votes, for women to have votes in particular - your vote is your one weapon.
Working with Yahoo! allows us to give our fans a chance to listen to our songs, check out the video, purchase our new album, win tickets to our show, and chat with us all in one place.
Pulp existed for 12 years before we got famous. Now, you could say that was just lack of imagination, but it's some kind of quality isn't it? Tenacity. You could also say it was sloth.
I think the credit crunch is a brilliant thing. We should all stop moaning and start celebrating. When times are tough, it's an opportunity to start looking at life in a different way.
We've done exactly what we've wanted. We never compromised to anyone and still managed to have a successful thing. I don't take that lightly. Yeah, we're really lucky to have had that.
I get stoned, I can't get home, I'm calling long distance on a public saxophone. My head is achin', my back is breakin', feel I got run over by Captain Coconut and his dog named Rover.
But to put out a greatest hits on one CD was totally impossible, I just couldn't do it. The best compromise was to put out two CDs - Early Days - which is what it is - and Latter Days.
It sucks to think about, honestly, but when you really consider the resources that it takes to press vinyl records, or the amount of gas that it takes to tour, it's really quite scary.
The first line (of I Am The Walrus) was written on one acid trip one weekend. The second line was written on the next acid trip the next weekend, and it was filled in after I met Yoko.
You feel alone if you're the only one thinking 'wouldn't it be nice if there was peace and nobody was getting killed.' So advertise yourself that you're for peace if you believe in it.
Life is what happens when we are busy doing other things. Peace is not something you wish for; it's something you make, something you do, something you are and something you give away.
If a person wants to be a part of your life, they will make an obvious effort to do so. Think twice before reserving a space in your heart for people who do not make an effort to stay.
Nobody understood The Reoccurring Dream, but after September 11, when we were coerced to do a national duty and go out and shop, surely people could begin to see what I was getting at.
In fact, since no one's been interested in my work, I took the responsibility recently to invest in my own work, so I'm producing a concert that was done at the Vision Festival in May.
Life seems terrible and disappointing, so you need to find something you need to make you stick around. Music that makes me happiest is the saddest music, with the most emotional feel.
When people see a negative thing about me on a magazine, they're gonna buy it. Every time some site writes something bad, all my followers go on there, and it brings them more traffic.
You want your kids to be developing at the right level, and everyone says, 'They'll be fine, they'll get there.' But you get concerned. You just want to make sure there's nothing else.
Anybody can make a baby without any checking, without thinking. This type of parenting can be tragic because one of the greatest actions a human being can do is to create another life.
Hormone replacement therapy does not change or affect your voice. And I have no problem with my voice: I really like my singing voice, I don't feel any dysphoria with my talking voice.
We used to have endless discussions with journalists about that: 'Why are you calling it noise? It's not noise, it's music,' and make references to everybody from John Cage to whoever.
It's really touching that we can come back after so long and care about making an album that says as much as this one does. And after all this time, we really do care about each other.
There have been times when I've feared for my own well-being in the great scheme of things because, historically, the track record has not been kind to the guitar players in this band.
I hear people telling me a lot that the production of that particular record - 'One Part Lullaby' - really influenced them. I'm like, 'What? We were dropped from the label after that!'
It's the whole Nietzche philosophy of you are your own God. That's why I debase myself in the concerts and tell people to spit on me. I'm saying to them 'You are no different from me'.
Choosing an acoustic guitar for a live setting can be different from picking out one for recording. One doesn't always work for the other. The sonic properties can be vastly different.
Creatively, I thought we were still viable and could do more records. But our working relationship just wasn't happening at all, and our chemistry as people broke down because of that.
Fleetwood Mac were really accessible musically, but lyrically and emotionally, we weren't so easy. And it was our music that helped us survive. But all of us were in pieces personally.
There were a lot of gifted amateurs in my day. Most of the kids now play fantastically well. I think there are so many bands around now who might get there, but it's a tougher journey.
I look back at things I said when I was younger - it was bulls - t. You do what you have to do to go where you have to go, but I look back and I don't believe what that guy was saying.
I have always believed that if you are honest in what you do, continually reinvent yourself at the same time, and there's respect amongst your band members, then you will be respected.
In business, you can have one massive success that earns $50 million overnight, and that's it. You're successful. End of story. But in the music business, you have to keep on doing it.
Oasis were the last great, traditional rock-n'-roll band. We came along before the Internet so, if you wanted to see us, you had to be there. It makes me feel like a righteous old man.
When I listen to a record, or when I'm making a record, I listen to everything. I listen to the drums, the bass, the voice, the arrangement. I listen to the whole piece as an ensemble.
I've always had self-belief, though my sensitive side has never been fully appreciated. For every 'Down in the Tube Station at Midnight,' I've written an 'English Rose.' People forget.
I'm not a real big fan of penises. Like my own, whenever I look at it, I just don't find anything attractive about it. I can't believe girls are into it. It blows my mind a little bit.
Put you energy into music. If it fails you, you can become an accountant or a dentist. And then if you become a dentist or an accountant, it's too late to become a musician afterwards.
And I ask why am I black, they say I was born in sin, and shamed inequity. One of the main songs we used to sing in church makes me sick, 'love wash me and I shall be whiter than snow.
People go to school and get educated, but most people who go to school and become a graduate in eduation still don't know what the word 'education' means... 'Educo' means to bring out.
Each thing leapfrogs. I do a Genesis project - like now, we're just finishing off an album - and then by the time the album is doing its thing, I could do nothing or I could do a film.
I feel like the actual, the most beautiful thing about a song is that it is something that goes out there in the universe and people use it in the way that they need it in their lives.
I'm basically a cocktail jazz kind of pianist. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not a very good keyboard player. People think I think I'm good. I think I'm a very poor piano player.
When I was a kid a growing up in Ontario, Canada, Lake Erie was so polluted, I never thought it would ever, EVER be turned around where they could start cleaning it out in my lifetime!
I would be more familiar with Janet Jackson than I was with the Teardrop Explodes or Joy Division, because I didn't want to listen to my competitors for fear of nicking ideas off them.
I don't like lifts and will walk up 20 flights of stairs if I have to. Crowded rooms make me uncomfortable, too, although I can sing to a stadium full of thousands of people no bother.
I got into computers back in the early '80s, so it was a natural progression of learning about e-mail in the mid-'80s and getting into the Internet when it opened up in the early '90s.
To some extent, 'The Wall' is asking the question, 'Do you want a voice? And if you do, you better bloody well go out and get it because it's not going to be handed to you on a plate.'
Any time we have the opportunity to play in a more intimate room, there's such a huge aspect of our set just built for that. And beyond that, we just love being that close to our fans.
And it took me, since I was 17 and left home, running from God, to now, as a 30-year-old man, when I honestly feel like I've come full circle and my heart's finally in the right place.
You have to watch all sides of your advancement, you have to make sure people's bodies and minds are healthy and their morale is cool before you can really go out and play great music.