Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There's so much that can be done on the guitar. And that's what is so good about the guitar - everyone can really enjoy themselves on it and have a good time, which is what it's all about.
This is the funny thing about me. People think John just comes up with all the ideas. I'm honored. People think I have a big old brain, but actually I am the sum of the people I work with.
We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create
When Yoko [Ono] and I got married, we got terrible racialist letters - you know, warning me that she would slit my throat. Those mainly came from Army people living in Aldershot. Officers.
I started being me about the songs, not writing objectively, but subjectively. I think it was Dylan who helped me realize that - not by any discussion or anything, but by hearing his work.
We had one thing in common - we were in love. But love is just a gift, and it doesn't answer everything and it's like a precious plant that you have to nurture and look after and all that.
Life: in all it's pain, misery, grandiosity and glory. I sing for myself, yet if others truly find inspiration through my words, then I have accidently done something brilliant in my life.
What is a hit? Who can tell? Who decides what a hit sounds like? I needed to remind myself that a hit is whatever people decide is a hit. I don't make hits; I make music. People make hits.
Well, rock used to be the only game in town in terms of radio and what the kids listen to. Now I think there was a big hip-hop takeover, and pop music, it became mechanical and computer-y.
I'm fishing for men with a certain kind of bait, and the bait that I am offering is not a candy; it's a very specific thing that I'm offering, which is a deep gospel and a deep conversion.
Music had been going on a long time before that. You have to remember that before rock n' roll there were a bunch of jazz musicians all doing heroin. That sh*t has been around a long time.
To me, if you're going to talk about funk, you have to go back to George Clinton and Bernie Worrell. Those guys are the giants. I've played with Bernie, and it was unreal. He's the master.
I don't really listen to bassists - not anymore. When I was younger, I listened to those guys and was trying to figure out everything they did. Nowadays, I draw inspiration from everybody.
You know, people would always ask me, 'How long is Primus going to go on?' And I would say, 'Until it isn't fun anymore.' At the end of the '90s, it just wasn't fun anymore on many levels.
I have an amazing wife and three beautiful children, and that certainly makes you less obsessive about your art as a musician - which I've always felt was more like painting than anything.
So you set out to travel to Rome... and end up in Istanbul. You set off for Japan... and you end up on a train across Siberia. The journey, not the destination, becomes a source of wonder.
...the devil we blame our atrocities on is really just each one of us. So don't expect the end of the world to come one day out of the blue - it's been happening every day for a long time.
Spare time is like spare change. It's hard to quantify, the definition of that phrase. What do I do when I'm not onstage singing, or sleeping, with or without someone else? I watch movies.
Once you declare your loyalty to a team, every person who doesn't support that team, it's their job to ruin you, to tell you you're an idiot and to tell you that you made the wrong choice.
I really love something about being around the recording studios - you know, like, those days in the '80s they'd be, like, in the studio 'til 4, 5, 6 in the morning working on these songs.
I think it's important for a guy to be 'protective,' shall we say, but you don't want to come off like you just rolled around in an Old Spice factory. Everyone has their own natural scent.
For my father, he didn't know what 'Grey's Anatomy' was. He didn't know who John Mayer was. But when I showed up on the 'Law & Order' TNT promo spot, he thought, 'Wow, my son has made it.'
Its quite there sonically; a strong representation of what the songs on our records are like. It's very loud and our set is based around containing as much energy and dynamics as possible.
For the past 32 years, I've done nothing outside the entertainment business. I've had some real highs and some real lows, but I love the work so much that I never once thought of quitting.
Right now, my career is in three directions: as a performer, as an arranger, as an author - and I don't give any one of them true precedent, or true top marks, as opposed to the other two.
You can only go with the excesses to a certain point; it wasn't always the Jack Daniels bottle. We weren't just a bunch of sloppy musicians on stage drinking; we would critique every show.
I hope we've lightened up over the years. We're fairly comfortable where we are, living-wise, and we're excited, honestly, just to still be around. I think we're less earnest than we were.
When we're not doing any Pearl Jam stuff, that's when I'll probably think of doing something else, whether that be scoring - hopefully more opportunities will come - or doing a solo thing.
At some shows, the set list gets changed while we are on stage. I know Ed thinks about the set very hard throughout the day in order to make the best show possible for the fans and for us.
Dave [Holland] plays the way he wants to play. And it's usually what's needed. You know, Dave is such a deep thinker. You can't tell him too much, else it might spoil his spirit, you know.
I couldn't do "What's Love Got To Do With It", Tina Turner because it wasn't the right tempo; so I scratched it from the record. I wanted to do it about a year ago, but something happened.
Paul's last words to Linda: "You're up on your beautiful Appaloosa stallion. It's a fine spring day. We're riding through the woods. The bluebells are all out, and the sky is clear-blue".
Cecilia was made in a living room on a Sony. It was like a little piece of magical fluff, bur it works. El Condor Pasa a Los Incas record that I love. Bridge is a very strong melodic song.
A phenomenon occurs but because you're in the middle of it, you just think it's your life-until it's over. And then you look back and say, What an unusual thing happened to me in the '60s.
I don't know if there's any formula. I'm not sure I believe in that, to be honest. I don't know if there's any rhyme or reason to music. Sometimes it hits and sometimes it doesn't, really.
Having a diverse sense of taste - or lack of taste - I loved so many different things. I was drawn to the stupidity and excitement of glam, I had a thorough upbringing in rhythm and blues.
But a lot of things probably will never change - like our friendships and our working relationships. As far as me and Patrick [Stump, the singer] and all of Fall Out Boy, it's in a vacuum.
There's a lot of smoke being blown at you, but this is no new sport to me; I've been doing it a long time, I'm used to it and I see it coming immediately the minute it gets into our realm.
I feel outside of the system where you’re male or female. So I just retired from caring. I don’t represent myself as a man or as a woman. I represent myself by not participating as either.
Then I got together with my brother and a friend and we decided to play dates. The more we played, the more we wanted to do it. And it got to a stage where we wanted to do it all the time.
Sometimes you want to run away Sometimes you think you do But you never had a dream like this before And you don't want to ask for more Sometimes you leave a mark Before you know the score
My job is to make grown men cry, to blow people's minds and elevate them, make them transcend and unlock emotions that have been repressed by life, their job, situation - that's what I do.
I'm not part of the Hollywood scene. I don't run around with 30 women. I have a very calm household. I'm surrounded by my grandkids and wonderful friends, and I consider myself very lucky.
Pretty much any artist that I know of that has found that mentor status, if they're generous and okay to bestow a bit of mentor-type information, it's do what you feel, not what you think.
I think that definitely any trauma - whether it's childhood or later in life - affects you negatively, especially when it's suppressed, but there's so much of us which is already in place.
Back in those days, all us skinny white British kids were trying to look cool and sound black. And there was Hendrix, the ultimate in black cool. Everything he did was natural and perfect.
I'm still going to make mistakes, but I don't have any problems with publicly professing my faith now. It just took me a long time to get to the right place in my relationship with Christ.
But at this phase of my life, I want to write and not have to think about whether a song is going to be a hit. I want to explore the music that inspires me, and I don't want to ape myself.
So I went out and bought Hard Again by Muddy Waters. That was a big learning curve. I listened to that album again and again and again. James Cotton was the harmonica player on that album.
St. Lucia represents, for me, where I found myself musically once I stopped trying to be cool, in some way, and stopped stopping these guilty pleasure influences I had from coming through.