The Lord loves the one that loves the Lord And the law says if you don't give, then you don't get loving Now the Lord helps those that help themselves And the law says whatever you do It comes right back on you

I think I'm getting there, but it's very hard to perform at my absolute peak when an awful lot of people come just to make their presence known, when the lights go down and all you can hear is people screaming.

I'd been to a lot of shows and I was just tired of people being jaded about music in general. Just a lot of pretensions, a lot of the attitude that goes along with it was a little difficult for me to deal with.

I think 'All Out of Love' is my favorite song because it's been the most successful. It's been in about 30 movies, it's been a number one record, and it keeps getting played on the radio, it's always somewhere.

I have a love of gear and pedals, from old pedals to new ones with new sounds. If I get depressed, I start looking for a certain type of pedal, learn the history, who and what it was made for, that kinda thing.

There is not one single police officer in America that I am not afraid of and not one that I would trust to tell the truth or obey the laws they are sworn to uphold. I do not believe they protect me in any way.

Someone like Ashlee Simpson, she lip-synchs on 'Saturday Night Live,' gets totally called out la Milli Vanilli, and no one really cares that much. It doesn't make me hate Ashlee; she's just taking instructions.

My acting range is incredibly limited and narrow, but I'm a good heavy. I'm a good authoritarian figure; I don't know why. "Can you be a cop?" Sure. "Can you be a Marine?" Absolutely. Well, at least in a movie.

I love making music, but if you make something that inspires somebody else to make something, without getting too airy-fairy, you've contributed to the zeitgeist in some way, and that's just an amazing feeling.

I never got formal training in music. I would just sit with my ear to the speaker and my hand on the needle. I'd listen to Wanda Jackson and think, 'How did she do that?,' and lift the needle and try it myself.

Part of what my music represents is to stand up and be the voice of those who feel like they are not heard and want to be treated with respect regardless of race, color, orientation - android, cyborg, whatever.

I actually have all these tapes, from when I was five, from when I was 10, and from when I was 15, that don't really have to do anything with each other, but they're sort of archeological in my musical history.

I had my battles. I had my times of just being upset and God would show me, 'Hey, I'm right here, I'll walk you through this and it doesn't make sense now but just trust me.' That's where faith come in - trust.

As a musician you fall into certain patterns that you're not conscious of, unless you start listening to yourself on tape a lot. If you do that you start recognizing habits; then you have to try and break them.

It's strange the way people hear and see things. Like going to films - —violent films. To me, seeing violence in a film makes me hate the violence. But there's beauty in violence if it's put over the right way.

Almost the moment he died, they put him in Playboy as one of the greatest drummers, which he was - there's no doubt about it. There's never been anybody since. He's one of the greatest drummers that ever lived.

New York is what Paris was in the twenties. . . the center of the art world. And we want to be in the center. It's the greatest place on earth. . . I've got a lot of friends here and I even brought my own cash.

You can't make everybody happy. We just put our head down and went forward. We said, 'This music is bigger than all of us.' That's how we felt. We said, 'You know what? We'll prevail. We'll bet on these songs.'

Composers are influenced by all the important music in their lives - and I suppose that since radio started playing popular music, that's as likely to be The Beatles or Aphex Twin as it is to be Verdi or Ravel.

When I start writing, I'll have a vague concept or I'll just have a title, and the song just goes on its own direction. Usually it goes in many directions within each song. They get really convoluted sometimes.

I could make a whole album with no one else involved at all. It would be a total, unadulterated expression of myself. Because whenever you have others playing on a project, their influence becomes a part of it.

Now I’m really glad that I speak French, because, let’s face it, girls dig it when a guy speaks French. They call it the language of love, and that ain’t no coincidence. Plus, I love my French fans! Très jolie!

It's now taken for granted that women are in bands and you can say feminist things in your songs. But back in the early '90s, there was a lot of violence at Bikini Kill shows that people don't realize happened.

We were definitely new to the whole music thing. The first album was a real collaborative effort between us, the writers, and the A&R people at Columbia Records. We really worked to find out what our sound was.

I don’t wanna have any other kind of job. I can’t work among people. I may as well try & make a career out of this. All my life my dream has been to be a big rock star - just may as well abuse it while you can.

I've never been on the cover of 'Tiger Beat' magazine, let's put it that way. But that's not why you go see Primus. You don't go see Primus to see what kind of new clothing I'm wearing or what my new hairdo is.

Everyone should be commended for allowing people to make disasters, to make failures - you've just got to be sure that it's a magnificent failure and that, by creating a magnificent failure, you plant the seed.

When I started 'Record Collection,' I had no idea that it would come out sounding the way that it did, and that's one of the best things about the creative process, taking turns with the things you didn't know.

We used to be called the Dixie Chickens. Then we played at a barbecue place, and they had a sign saying, 'Featured Tonight: The Dixie Chickens,' and everybody started ordering it for dinner! So we shortened it.

But I've always liked to be the kind of drummer and musician who likes to go outside of what's expected of me, and I've always been able to do more than you necessarily hear with every band I've ever played in.

There's a lot of particularly good things going on in my life at the moment. It's the fact that I get to be an ambassador for the concept of modernity. I can be creative and useful. And I don't have to grow up.

I have nothing to prove. I just want to follow the music. I love making records. I love playing live. That's it. There's nothing outside of that. I look forward to the weirdness that's in front of us every day.

When I get home from touring, I need to find something to match that so I don't get my adrenaline withdrawals. Being exposed to every element of danger while you're sitting on a motor - that, to me, is freedom.

Creativity is not linear, just like the earth is not flat....If you keep going long enough you will always get back to where you started from. That is when you have lived a full life. That is the artist's path.

A performer learns with experience and with age. I did not know the future when I left home and started out to begin my career: I started qawaali; then I met Peter Gabriel and was exposed to a lot of new ideas.

I am a vegetarian because I realized that even little chickens suffer pain and fear, experience a range of feelings and emotions, and are as intelligent as mammals, including dogs, cats, and even some primates.

In the early-'60s, when you look at that period of time - up to the mod time - when everybody was wearing skinnier suits and skinny lapels and skinny ties - that came out of the States, and that was quite cool.

When I lived in a little flat in Pimlico in 1981, I'd write in the hallway. As you walked in, there was a tiny little recess type thing, hardly a hallway, really, and I'd sit there writing songs with my guitar.

Detroit has always been a rock and roll audience for me and picked up on me and my performances long before a lot of other places in the country. I will never forget that. It's a home away from home. I love it.

No seriously... when there's families, you tend to go back to your room after the gig rather than go for a drink with the other guys. But there's always someone who's got something going, like the tour manager.

I've always felt profoundly about what's going on in the world on a daily basis. What I hadn't felt was that I was at a point in my writing career where I could write about these things in songs and do it well.

So many people are killing their childhood. It's like, "Okay, today I've decided I'm gonna be a grown-up, and I'm not a kid anymore." But, that's bullshit. You're still a kid. It makes no sense to kill the kid.

Everybody has a right to like or dislike anything or anyone. From a flower to a flavor to a book or a composition but it is very sad that in our country we actually fight over such things in an unseemly manner.

The problem is that corporations have way too much power in Congress and the government and they're rigging the system so that they don't pay taxes, but we do. We pay for all these crazy wars they come up with.

I do want to make music that people love, but I also want to make music that I love. I know I can't please everyone with anything I do, so I don't think too much about how other people are going to take things.

It was like fighting with the MPAA... to me it was like this is an R easy... but it was NC 17 over and over and even with this cut they were like, you are right on the edge buddy, one more thing and it's NC-17.

People think it's funny that I enjoy dreaming so much. I just use it as a form of entertainment. It's very private. I don't see my dreams as separate. I mean, half the time I'm wandering around dreaming anyway.

The gap between rich and poor is, in fact, widening enormously. This idea of building up the powers of people who are already powerful and keeping everyone else back is a recipe for endless misery and conflict.

The only thing I've got is that the ring fingers on both my hands have a little arthritis in each. It's a worn out joint because of too much exertion and stress. But it doesn't affect my playing, which is good.

In my rear view mirror the sun is going down sinking behind bridges in the road and I think of all the good things that we have left undone and I suffer premonitions confirm suspicions of the holocaust to come.

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