Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
If you are a kid in Beverly Hills, (I am not putting down people who live in Beverly Hills) if that kid knows private school and a credit card... you can't say the kid is taking life for granted. He is taking the life that was given to him.
Rarely do I finish a song lyrically before I have a musical idea there, but then again, rarely ever would I finish a song musically before starting the lyrical ideas. So a lot of the time, they come in tandem, or they just come at a glance.
The way that people have gotten on board with me is the most encouraging thing in the world, but it's all very connected to the 14 years I've been on tour with Steel Train, even my band before that, Outline, and then fun. and now Bleachers.
My grandmother was the matriarch. If you didn't have a place to stay, if you needed food, if you were just coming out of jail or rehab, you went to her. Watching her in our family and our wider community was what inspired me and still does.
I don't know why, it's the same reason why you like some music and you don't like others. There's something about it that you like. Ultimately I don't find it's in my best interests to try and analyze it, since it's fundamentally emotional.
I think we got started like all bands. We wanted to make some noise, hang out, and have some fun. Remember, we're from Buffalo - there isn't really that much to do. When we started we were a cover band and slowly developed our own material.
I got problems. I freak out, go to a shrink, go through all kinds of therapy and stuff, but I'm learning how to deal with it. That's why I've chosen one hour a night to get all of my aggressions out. to really tell the world the way I feel.
The rock & roll industry is very incestuous, and we have all been close at one time or another. A lot of beautiful music and a lot of beautiful times came from that. A lot of pain, too, because, inevitably, different relationships broke up.
The problem with the Moodies is not what to play, it's what to leave out! That's always difficult. We stopped having support acts many years ago just because of that. We needed getting on to two hours; there's such a big catalog to call on.
I think of myself as unconventional. I maybe always had a problem with authority, like a stubbornness about what's expected - despite wanting to get some recognition through performing - but also not always wanting to do the expected thing.
I never felt like I had anything really figured out. When I was a teenager, it was all about teenagers having an 'identity crisis.' That was the phrase that was used. But in my early 20s, I was still like, 'When am I going to be over that?'
Michael Jackson was the biggest star the world has ever seen - he put so much into everything; a lot of attention to detail. I want to do that. I want to pay that kind of attention to detail in everything - in music, visually - all of that.
I guess I see 'Goo' half as a really New York record because I think there are a lot of really particular New York references on it, but I also see it, for us, as the first of our records that really opened up to the larger world around us.
My heroes are guys like Frank Capra and Elia Kazan and Coen brothers and Terry Gilliam, more so than a lot of bass players at this point in my life. So I've always been an old-film nut and have very much enjoyed doing videos over the years.
You know, it's weird. It's - it hasn't really changed my life in any kind of way that I can measure. I mean, it's obviously such an insanely amazing thing. You know, none of my other records I've ever had before even broke into the top 100.
To tell you the truth, I've never been really good at learning other people's stuff. I've been playing since I was 11, and I never took lessons. I kind of learned through hit and miss. I had the patience just because I loved guitar so much.
I got really paranoid, burning every song onto three CDs and hiding them in various places around the house just in case I got burgled and there was, y'know, a fire in my bedroom. I told friends where I was hiding them in case I was killed.
I think we have an obligation to put on a fun show and put on a concert that's memorable, that's energetic and that spreads joy and open-mindedness. If being open-minded and joyful is against your political beliefs, then you know, f**k you.
Death looms large I guess because it should. It's the one thing that we as human beings from birth have a right to. It's the only thing we've really got, and I don't mean to sound bleak about this, but it's a unifying factor amongst us all.
Well, as anyone who actually writes knows, if you sit down and are prepared, then the ideas come. There's a lot of different ways people explain that, but, you know, I find that if I sit down and I prepare myself, generally things get done.
But I also enjoy music outside the band. I've been doing production for other people, including Robert Wyatt. Check him out. The album we did together, 'Rock Bottom,' I think it's really lasted well. It's a 35-year-old album, but it worked.
I really feel like I came out of the water when I graduated from college, because I wasn't really aware of what was going on. If certain people tried to take advantage of me or whatever, I never really realized it until I got out of school.
We're going to face problems on a day to day basis and there's probably going to be that one obstacle that you think oh I'm not going to be able to get through it but just remember if you set your mind to achieve a goal, then you can do it.
In the clearing stands the boxer, and a fighter by his trade. And he carries a reminder of every glove that laid him down... or cut him till he cried out in his anger and his shame "I am leaving! I am leaving" but the fighter still remains.
My brother had a house in Paris. To it came many Western classical musicians. These musicians all made the same point: 'Indian music,' they said, 'is beautiful when we hear it with the dancers. On its own, it is repetitious and monotonous.'
I was onstage with Menudo since I was 12 years old. To us, the most successful one was the guy with the most fans. If you moved your hips and the girls screamed, you were getting it right. Who wouldn't want to be like Elvis or Jim Morrison!
People have this delusion that everything has to be for everybody at all times. Every album must be liked by everybody, and every TV show must be liked by everybody, and every movie must be liked by everybody. Everything then becomes bland.
We've all got to earn a living. And writing songs is what I do. But when I've done a record, it's not that I think it's better or worse than anyone else's, but if I think that nobody else would have done it if I hadn't, well then that's ok.
My favorite guitar now is my Martin HD-7 because it's got everything. It's got the jingle-jangle thing from the twelve string, it's got the flexibility of the six string, and the bass notes where you can do bass runs and that sort of thing.
Mad World' hasn't dated because it's expressive of a period I call the teenage menopause, where your hormones are going crazy as you're leaving childhood. Your fingers are on the cliff and you're about to drop off, but somehow you cling on.
It just took all of that to come to a screeching halt, to get to the point of having nothing, for me to finally realize, Hey, what are you fighting with this for? Until then, I hadn't claimed my faith as my own; I had just grown up with it.
Musically, some of the acts that I've really been identifying with are: Fleetwood Mac, Roxy Music, Vangelis, Jean-Michel Jarre, Earth, Wind & Fire, in general music that seems to have a lot of romance to it and a certain glamorous idealism.
All through the kind of late '80s and '90s, every A&R record company man was saying, 'Now what we want is another record like 'Back in the High Life.' And, of course, that's not the way to make music at all. That's the tail wagging the dog.
People love to hear music on their personal devices, but the issue really becomes, if you're able to download music, you should know this download and the quality of it is going to be of the highest, and that it has a value to it and on it.
I hunt deer because they aren't capable of higher forms of thinking. All they care about is, 'What am I going to eat next, who am I going to screw next, and can I run fast enough to get away'. They are very much like the French in that way.
An uninhibited, Chuck Berry devotee but experimented with and broke a lot of ground on feedback techniques and solid variations in tonal and dissonant utilizations. I'm one of the best guitarists in the world, and I play with great emotion.
What I liked about doing a soundtrack is that it's almost the opposite of any kind of normal recording that a band does, because it's very much a restricted, narrow... And I kind of like that, I find it exciting to work within these things.
'Higher Power' was the result of a personal experience: a friend of mine who went through the process of addiction and recovery. It's a very, very tough thing - very easy to become addicted and very, very hard to become a recovering addict.
I would never really listen to my own music or whatever, but I write music so I can deal with things and I hope that some people can relate in that. Maybe help people, or just bring a smile to their face or make them feel cool or something.
Once you can get a fan to listen to an album a handful of times and really have a lot of substance for them to grasp, then you're looking at having a fan that really appreciates what you do for life and can appreciate coming to see it live.
When the script was written, it was sent to me with asterisks marking where he felt a song would be appropriate. Before the film was shot, the score was written. I made a demo of it, so they lived with the music as they were making the film.
I still miss the days when a haircut was just a haircut. It was only your mates you had to face. Now there's a whole industry centred around people analysing your 'look'. I just cannot understand how anyone could get so worked up by... hair.
When I was a kid growing up, we had a cherry tree in the backyard, 100 years old. I climbed it, and it gave shade in the summertime and excellent cherries in the late summer. Having cherry blossoms around gives the best springtime vibe ever.
My version, of course, is not this flag-waving, let's all get on the Jesus train and ride out of hell. I'm not that kind of guy. It's an embrace that life is good, worth living and yeah, it's not easy, but there are more pluses than minuses.
I am hopelessly divided between the dark and the good, the rebel and the saint, the sex maniac and the monk, the poet and the priest, the demagogue and the populist. Pen to paper, I put it all down - I'm out on a limb here, so watch my back.
I accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me. I know some people are terrified of the bomb. But then some people are terrified to be seen carrying a modern screen magazine. Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most.
I paint mostly from real life. It has to start with that. Real people, real street scenes, behind the curtain scenes, live models, paintings, photographs, staged setups, architecture, grids, graphic design. Whatever it takes to make it work.
I actually believe 'Sustainability', as a concept, is one of the arteries leading to the heart of so many of our cultural transitions at play today. And it's this concept which leads me to bottled water, and its multibillion dollar industry.
The biggest crime in England is to rise above your station. It's fine to be a pop star. 'Oh, it's great, lots of fun, aren't they sweet, these pop stars! But to think you have anything to say about how the world should work? What arrogance!'
People have been rumouring that Queen are going to split up for the last eight years at least. I've got some great cuttings at home from people saying 'One thing is certain, Queen will no longer exist in a year's time.' And that was in 1973.