I am too conservative to use another studio than the one I am used to, so I "had" to travel all the way from France to Norway every time I wanted to record an album. That was about 3,500 km each way in a Lada Niva with a cruising speed of 90 kph.

I remember when I was a kid, every time the Beatles were on the radio, my dad would say he'd give me a dollar if I could tell him what band it was. So by the time I was about nine, I knew to just say 'The Beatles,' and I'd get a dollar out of it.

You always have to try new things, and that's the one thing that we've learned from all the greats - every album isn't gonna be every fan's favorite, but as long as you keep switching it up and making new fans, it's really about being persistent.

You have to have passion for anything you do. Whether it's sports, whether it's music, whether you want to be Mother Theresa, you have to have passion for what it is you do, or what's the point in getting up in the morning and getting out of bed?

Without intermediate artists, music is what "American Idol" decides is great or made by the very poor, because Sharon Osbourne's made everything free. No, we have to support our local artists. It's just that simple. Otherwise, we will have no art.

I'm not a home-studio guy. I spend a lot of time working by myself developing songs, but I really need some other counterpart to help me pull it all together, because you go nuts working if I had to finish an entire project all within my own head.

I haven't had that many people onstage for a while, and I'm looking forward to that. They're all such creative musicians in their own right. They're all complete individuals. They're not just a pick-up band. They all have their own thing going on.

It's a very weird job to have as a musician, because you spend long periods of time alone and then you have to go work with people for a long period of time and present your music after you've been making it by yourself. It's a very drastic phase.

I loved my 17 years with R.E.M., but I'm ready to reflect, assess and move on to a different phase of my life. The four of us will continue our close friendship, and I look forward to hearing their future efforts as the world's biggest R.E.M. fan.

A studio is an absolute labyrinth of possibilities - this is why records take so long to make because there are millions of permutations of things you can do. The most useful thing you can do is to get rid of some of those options before you start

You feel as if you're not living a full life. Which, of course, is why - it's my theory about why so many people who are heavily into computers are also into extreme sports and S&M. It's because their bodies are crying out for some kind of action.

I think music is about our internal life. It’s part of the way people touch each other. That’s very precious to me. And astronomy is, in a sense, the very opposite thing. Instead of looking inwards, you are looking out, to things beyond our grasp.

I think music is about our internal life. It's part of the way people touch each other. That's very precious to me. And astronomy is, in a sense, the very opposite thing. Instead of looking inwards, you are looking out, to things beyond our grasp.

I think the best way to find out about something is to try to do it to the max. A lot of people take up a hobby or sport and then find an excuse not to carry on with it. Once I start something, I won't stop until I'm as good at it as I'll ever be.

You still had to find the music inside your language. You know, it was - that's a big part of what sort of moved me to begin writing the book. I wrote a little essay and I felt, yeah, this is a good voice. This is a good feeling. It feels like me.

For film and television, it's interesting how fans feel that their particular ways of manifesting their affections are the correct ones. It's not just about being a fan, it's about how you perform your fandom. That's always been interesting to me.

I think one of the reasons that we are able to actually keep making music that we want to make, and that we're inspired by, is because there is a certain amount of instability constantly, and I think that mirrors the instability of any given life.

Country music has changed tremendously, so what now is considered country was not considered country at that time. We were doing stuff that probably could have been called country music today, but would certainly have not have fit in at that time.

I have been using the Lipo Target Massager (not every day) and the Detox Oil. Recently my husband noticed that the cellulite on my thighs had decreased. For a man to notice anything there has to be quite a big difference - so it works really well.

I think that sometimes almost the bigger tragedy in a weird way is all of the future imagined creative projects that could have happened that didn't. I feel the same way about lots of brilliant people who die young, kind of senselessly especially.

When I started writing songs for Temple of the Dog, I went to my room with my acoustic guitar, and I was happy staying in that mode. It was more chordal based and more lyric driven. I enjoyed not making riff-based songs built around a guitar idea.

It is a fact of history and of current events that human beings exaggerate, misinterpret, or wrongly remember events. They have also fabricated pious fraud. Most believers in a religion understand this when examining the claims of other religions.

We got to do a few things with President Clinton. To be invited to Washington again to play with Ashanti and all those other cool people there in front of President Bush and the rest of the world feels awesome. I'm really looking forward to going.

You look at Michael McDonald and people like that; I think they just tried to write music that was true to themselves. That's our bottom line. Whatever people view us as, I think as long as we try to create good music that will win out in the end.

I'd rather play a tune on a horn, but I've always felt that I didn't want to train myself. Because when you get a train, you've got to have an engine and a caboose. I think it's better to train the caboose. You train yourself, you strain yourself.

I had a dream that Britney Spears rubbed her breasts in my face and Jennifer Lopez gave me head while Salma Hayek sucked my toes and the Olsen twins videotaped everything. I would have kept dreaming it, too, if I hadn't set off the smoke detector.

The word religion has such bad connotations for me, that it's been responsible for wars, and it shouldn't be that way at all, it's just the way the meaning of the word has evolved to me. I have to wonder what we did on this planet before religion.

I played some shows, but I'm disappointed it didn't do better. I wish all my shows sold out, I wish I had sold more copies, I wish that a song was picked up to be in a TV show - whatever these little benchmarks are. You always want something more.

I want a girl who looks good when she wakes up in the morning. We could take her face and dip it in dough and she'll make some nice-face cookies. Some girls wake up, man, you could put their face in dough and you'll get a gorilla cookie, for real!

The manner in which Americans ''consume'' music has a lot to do with leaving it on their coffee tables, or using it as wallpaper for their lifestyles, like the score of a movie --it's consumed that way without any regard for how and why it's made.

I'm trying to separate myself from other people by having songs that would be considered - technically - original things. I don't seek out mashups. I'm associated with the whole mashup movement, and it's too bad because I'm not a huge fan of them.

I don't bill myself as an atheist but as a naturalist. Naturalism is a belief system. A lot of scientists bristle at that. We all have to believe we can find the truth. Evidence is my guide. I rely on observation, experimentation and verification.

I'm a biologist, so... Which I think should be mandatory. Biology should be mandatory. Mathematics? They say we don't know enough about math and science. Well we don't know enough about science and particularly biology, which is such a huge field.

The groove can go for like three days - once I'm in it it will just keep going until I'm totally exhausted. But that's how I like to work, I like to be away from everyone and just get in the zone, and stay there for as long as I can keep it there.

At the same time, I was listening to black music, and I began to think that the best musicians were receiving the worst treatment. The people who were doing the greatest work were despised as lower class, with no dignity accorded to what they did.

It took me until my teenage years to realize that I was medicating with music. I was pushing back against my stupid school uniform, instructors who called me by my last name and my classmates, who, while friendly enough, were not at all inspiring.

I was never told to "Get up, get out there, get a job." It was never a thing either parent ever said I had to do. It was what I wanted to do. I think I was very interested in being away from them as much as possible. Employment was great for that.

Jay Z in many ways is a rock artist. In the sense that they've used hard rock, punk rock, psychedelic rock aesthetics and influences in their music. When you see Kanye West, he has a full band playing. Jay Z has a full band playing with Marshalls.

In my head, I consider 'No Turning Back' my 'dipping the toe in the water' album. It was mostly covers of favorite songs, and there were three originals in there. So, it feels like it was just my album to see what the temperature of the water was.

So there was something of a learning curve with doing your own thing and people seeing you outside of the band. I mean, people have never really heard my voice before - or heard a whole record of mine before. So it was a completely new experience.

I actually have only one Jackson! ESP makes all of my guitars now. But that Jackson was probably the last one I paid for, which is why I used it so much; I had to get my money's worth. That's why, for the longest time, it was in all of our photos.

I don't like to tell people what format they can get things in, or say, "I'm only going to release this on vinyl and nothing else. You have to come to my world." I don't like to say that to people either. But, I do think there's a loss of romance.

The more the ensemble, the duet or the forty piece orchestra, plays as one person, the more it makes people dance, because you're back in the womb. You feel mom's heartbeat. It makes you move. It reminds you of that warm, groovy space you were in.

Things always work out if you don't send that e-mail. That's another great life lesson: I've sent enough e-mails of just "f - k you, f - k you, f - k you" and hit send. I've learned a lot from never being able to take back that I sent that e-mail.

We all been playing those mind games forever, Some kinda druid dudes lifting the veil, Doing the mind guerrilla, Some call it magic the search for the grail. Love is the answer and you know that for sure, Love is a flower you got to let it grow...

The worst drugs are as bad as anybody's told you. It's just a dumb trip, which I can't condemn people if they get into it, because one gets into it for one's own personal, social, emotional reasons. It's something to be avoided if one can help it.

The thing that started me painting originally was seeing Bambi when I was about nine. I was incredibly disturbed by the forest fire that killed Bambi's mother, and that distress gave me the impulse to create something, as a way of dealing with it.

I don't blame the average seventeen-year-old punk-rock kid for calling me a sellout. I understand that. And maybe when they grow up a little bit, they'll realize there's more things to life than living out your rock & roll identity so righteously.

I had daydreams and fantasies when I was growing up. I always wanted to live in a log cabin at the foot of a mountain. I would ride my horse to town and pick up provisions. Then return to the cabin, with a big open fire, a record player and peace.

Sorry to take your award, Faith ... Everybody knows that it's really not about the numbers and the chart positions and the sales and all that stuff, it's about relationships and my two best friends are at home ... I know you're as excited as I am.

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