Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There isn't a dearth of it, but I will confess that it's harder for me to find songs on which I'm willing to invest anything from ten to fifteen hours writing an arrangement than it was in times past.
Finding out that Ray Charles sang country songs but it sounded as soulful as any rhythm and blues record that kind of opened up my horizons for what songwriting was and what singers I could listen to.
Because of the inherent challenges of life on the earth, all of humanity is vulnerable. This is all the more reason to seek the kingdom of heaven within and find the peace that leads to understanding.
What I've learned over the years is that the craft of songwriting is trying to take the personal and make it universal - or in the case of telling a story, taking the universal and making it personal.
It's always something that interests me, crafting a really perfect pop gem, but it's not a lifelong obsession. I've kind of moved beyond it. I think I needed to get that out of my system, to exorcise.
The music industry is saying, This is the format, and if you'll fit into this format, you can be on radio, and if radio will play you, MTV will expose you, and MTV will expose you, we'll sell records.
I have been firming up and making changes in my roster for 2001. This needs to be done from now and then, to make sure what you are booking is working, and to keep a balance in your roster that works.
It's a younger generation running the show, and I miss the generation we had in the '70s. They were really very honorable guys, like Neal Bogart and Bill Graham, people who will never be around again.
The original concept of rock and roll... was supposed to be this young angst with mistakes and all. Four or five guys get together, get angry and that's really how it starts, and it's all this energy.
The reason I wanted to play guitar was because I saw Buddy Holly and then our own homegrown Shadows on TV in 1957 or '58. I wanted to learn to play guitar so I could do what they did and be in a band.
Ultimately, if someone's paying hard-earned money to see me play live, they don't want a rant about what's happening on the other side of the world. They don't want to know which way they should vote.
I think audiences sometimes mistakenly assume a quality performance comes from some great emotional disturbance rather than really intense concentration. Concentration and flow is what it's all about.
I heard this massive thud. I spun around, and there Keith was, on the ground. He'd cut his gums up on impact, he was very bloody, and clutching his head. I think it was a kind of wake-up call for him.
I've always had to do things my way; I play guitar my way; I've taken myself to the edges of life my way; I've gotten clean my way; And I'm still here. Whether or not I deserve to be is another story.
'Routine' was written on piano, and you can hear that. But then you listen to 'Happy Returns,' and you can tell it's definitely been written on guitar, with that singer-songwriter-y strumming quality.
And I remember as a second or third grader having some autonomy to go to the store if I felt like it, walk home, take my time, kick the can. We were on our own schedule after school, so that was cool.
I don't really know how to play drums, so I play them wrong. But the pro guys, they never sweat. You know if someone's gone to music school, because they don't sweat when they play drums if they have.
As long as we continue to fight in between the jamming with all we have to save America from the current suicidal deathwish of the corrupt, criminal punks intentionally destroying the last best place.
I'll regularly just burst out into laughter at funerals, at the expense of the dead. What's the difference between a dead person and Thom Yorke? One is talented and the other is dead. **** you grandma
I got into the music business thinking it was really radical, that it wasn't really a business at all, that it was a lot of people being artistic and creative. Not true, and it made me very depressed.
When we started Angels & Airwaves, we wanted to produce our art on different mediums, but the film was an ambitious one because we actually didn't go into it thinking we could make a big feature film.
People can smell the bullshit and see through the curtains. People know when something's real and when something isn't, and when some dude really means what he's saying or singing, or when he doesn't.
We're very historically tried and true when it comes to our albums. We pick the best songs; we get rid of the songs we feel don't fit on the album, and we don't work on remixing or remastering albums.
I'm digging Batman. I'm digging that balance, that duality. He's always on the edge and trying to balance himself within the rules of what's lawful and justice, and being Bruce Wayne and being Batman.
I like to write pop songs and the stuff I write is fairly poppy, so I thought maybe my lot in life was to write pop songs for people. It never felt right writing songs for other people to sing, though.
I personally believe this: We have only today; yesterday's gone and tomorrow is uncertain. That's why they call it the present. And sobriety really is a gift... for those who are willing to receive it.
Of course, there's a certain type of person who feels that anything which becomes mainstream has to be rejected immediately. And that's part of the indie-alternative snobbery and hierarchy and elitism.
I spent many years trying to write a lot like Ben Folds or John Lennon or Rivers Cuomo. I think that's healthy when you're learning to write and seeing how chords fit together and how songs take shape.
I was living in a loft with Dave Sitek - this loft full of people just working on their stuff. Some were painting, some were writing. Any plans you had were kind of like a plan for the next two months.
The cliche of what a rock star is - there's something elitist about it. I never related to that. I'm an entertainer. I think of it as, you're performing for people. It's not a self-glorification thing.
I've had a lot of things rendered as not being effective or as some indication of my lack of sanity, only to be praised ten, fifteen, twenty years later for what I did once in this overt consciousness.
It's wonderful to read interviews by old blues guys - they talk about all their influences, they talk about who taught them how to play, and who they saw, and how they were determined to play that way.
There would be brilliant songs, but, as [Bob] Dylan admitted on the recent Martin Scorsese documentary about him (No Direction Home), the specific muse that inspired "It's Alright Ma" would not return.
Along with some of the worst music of Bob Dylan's career ("Self-Portrait," 1970), this period produced some gems - including many songs recorded with The Band in '67 but not released until years later.
Now everyone dreams of a love faithful and true, But you and I know what this world can do. So let's make our steps clear so the other may see. And I'll wait for you...should I fall behind wait for me.
I hadn't performed by myself in a while. It feels very natural to me, and I assume people come for the very same reasons as they do when I'm with the band: to be moved, for something to happen to them.
Over the years, music put a weapon in my hand and words in my mouth it backed me up and shielded me, it shook me and scared me and showed me the way; music opened me up to living and being and feeling.
Twitter is sort of version of labeling, except with 140 characters instead of a labelmaker. It's the way of calling things out for what they are, wearing badges. Twitter is like the new Scarlet Letter.
I wrote so much about fandom and participation for NPR that I eventually realized my most fertile way of participating in music is to actually play it, at least in a way that made the most sense to me.
I was in every band class I could get in, like after school jazz band and marching band, and that's where I really learned to read music from elementary all the way through junior high and high school.
I was always tinkering around with stuff but nothing serious at the time. I was doing animations and drawing like crazy, but I wasn't imagining that I'd be performing music for people, that's for sure.
There's like a special group of people that come from different parts of the planet to study with me. It's nice. I just gave a workshop in Boston at the New England Conservatory, which was really nice.
I had kind of a mean piano teacher. I went to Catholic school, so it was like the typical thing you would imagine - a little kid with a white-haired teacher frowning at the fact that I didn't practice.
When you're out on the road touring and touring and then making records, you're just constantly looking forward, constantly working. You don't really stop to look at where you are or where you've been.
I had a very colorless background, and when I left Ohio and moved to England, nobody knew who I was and I had a real freedom. I could be free to experiment and experience things and I liked that a lot.
And sometimes you just have to trust that there will be more, sometimes you go through dry spells and you have to assure yourself "no no, it's gonna be fine. There's gonna be more songs, it's all good.
When you're younger, you have ideas and visions of what you're going to be like when you're older and what love is going to be like and who you're gonna be married to and all of these different things.
We would not have rock and roll without Chuck Berry, and when I first heard Chuck Berry, I fell in love with that music, and when I saw him, I changed my whole career trajectory that I was on as a kid.
A lot of the media says, 'oh, black musician converts X-number of Klansmen.' I never converted one. But over 200 have left that, the white supremacy movements, because I have been the impetus for that.
If I wasn't going through a thing where I was also being my characters offstage, uh, I'm much happier just wearing the most low-profile things that I can come up with just so I can get down the street.