Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I've never treated anyone in my band like they're not on the same level as me. I'm not that kind of person. In the past, I have disrespected people in my band and that was my weakness. I think some people have a hard time understanding how I think.
I have more perspective now, and am happier now. It's not that I don't want success, but I now know I can have success at a lower level and make much more money doing it by myself. I make $6 or $7 bucks a record vs. nothing off those other records.
I'm actually embarrassed by the idea of writing songs about myself - I imagine someone hearing them and thinking This guy is a bit self-obsessed. I don't know if I really have a persona, in that respect. I want to just make the music and hide away.
If you've been playing for a few years...especially in a group context... you'll see if you have the ability ... or the passion to want to carry on. It's something that you have to be dedicated to ...and you've got to love ..no matter what happens.
That's the way you judge a car, man, [good or bad], when you start it up. It's just the same thing. I mean, I drive a Ferrari - not to be cute, but because I dig it. I'd rather drive a ten-year-old Ferrari than one of them new things-they don't go.
I am the audience. I want to observe people. Even when I'm playing drums onstage, I'm watching people. I'm looking at them and their faces and their T-shirts and their signs. And travelling by motorcycle, especially, the world is just coming at me.
We hope we are moving toward a world where sexual orientation is not an issue, because we hate the idea of a gay ghetto. I think that it's a real shame that people become restricted by their sexuality or define their whole lives by their sexuality.
When you've been initiated, you can stand in the world differently. And I think it is up to all of us, we can have cheerleaders, we can have supporters, but it comes down to us as individuals, how do we now proceed? Do we have the tools to proceed?
The most annoying person on the BBC is Russell Brand, I've actually been close up to that boy. He smells like when you mix garlic with coffee and alcohol. I'm just saying when you get close to him, he could do with a bit of Sure For Men, he stinks.
I made a lot of different experiments with tapes at that time, until I finally realized around 1995, that sound is an interesting subject for me. Ever since then sound got more and more integrated into my art works, musically as well as physically.
Even before I wrote any songs, I had this idea of a triangle where the voice was at the top, some sort of guitar element on one side, and then some sort of really basic rhythm on the other side. That's where I started from in the recording process.
I listen back, and I hear what's there, and I know in my heart, in my gut, that we [The Replacements] were the real deal. No one can take that away. You can call us buffoons, or clowns or whatever. But when we wanted to, we were as good as anybody.
My father had played the guitar when he was young, and my uncle Jack had worked for Kalamazoo, before the war, developing guitar pickups. So there was a kind of family thing about the guitar, although it was considered something of an anomaly then.
You are still lucky - you have a certain type of people who keep buying your music - but then you can get typecast and have to keep making that same music, and you can change only slightly. It's risky to bounce around and change your type of music.
When I sang that song, I felt it was almost as if some force had moved into my body. Things like that have only happened to me singing jazz. It doesn't happen when singing pop. I get so deeply into the music, it feels like I've become someone else.
I'm often troubled by a very strong instinct to share everything that's going on with me. I want to feel that connection, even with people I don't know. Then this other voice says, 'That's not prudent. People will use what you've said to hurt you.'
It's sort of a feeling of power onstage. It's really the ability to make people smile, or just to turn them one way or another for that duration of time, and for it to have some effect later on. I don't really think it's power... it's the goodness.
Freddie obviously knew he was ill long before we did. We knew there was something wrong, but we didn't know what it was. He told us eventually. We didnt want to believe it was true. But we all stuck round him, formed a circle, and gave him support.
There is no 'us' and 'them'; it's an illusion. We are all human beings, and we all have a responsibility to support one another and to discover ways of wresting the power from the very, very few people who control all the cash and all the property.
People who aren't as interested in recorded music as they used to be will say, 'Oh, 'Buena Vista?' Loved it.' And I'll say, 'Well, how about any of my other recent records. I've been doing some pretty good ones. You like those?' And they go, 'Huh?'
There have been many happy days and many unhappy ones in my life, but the most important was the day I met my missus, who is sometimes estranged and sometimes not. She got me off smack - although that's not the main reason it's the happiest moment.
A lot of my ideas come from McNally Jackson bookstore. One of my favorite things to do is just go there and look through architecture books and interior design books. Something about the aesthetics of space and beautiful images works with my brain.
The simple fact is we do not live in a democracy. Certainly not the kind our Founding Fathers intended. We live in a corporate dictatorship represented by, and beholden to, no single human being you can reason with or hold responsible for anything.
Unfortunately, we have warring in the world, so the youngest minds, the brilliant minds, are sent off to war. I think that, you know, you have brilliant people with great possibilities and that's why I really am not really for war. I really am not.
I think it's evident that expensive neighborhoods in Seattle are surrounded by natural beauty. That elevates city life. So if we can make cities more attractive in the long run, we can be smarter about issues like development, zoning and economics.
I recommend anybody go to a bookstore, go down the self-help or new-age section, and just walk those aisles. See what book jumps out at you; there's a good chance it's a book you need in your life. That's basically how I find the books that I read.
The divide between me and the modern world is growing further because I to a larger degree manage to rid myself of my dependence on the modern world. If the modern world collapsed tomorrow I would be fine, and I see so many others who would not be.
If we were to find a drummer that we were comfortable with and who we felt could really become a part of what we're about, it'd be great. But would we ever rush to find a guy just get back on the road? No. I think we'd rather go down with the ship.
When you listen to someone sing from inside their head, their same mix, and you listen to their voice as loud as they like it, or the track of the band as low as they like it, you can really hear all of the nuances and the mistakes if there are any.
There's been this perception that Europeans still hold on to, that they discover the real talented ones in American culture and give them proper credit and that's not true anymore - it used to be. A lot of jazz musicians would get respect in Europe.
The original Heart logo was made back in the real early '70s by Mike Fisher, who I used to be in a relationship with. He was first our manager and then our soundman. When I met him, he was in design school for architecture, so he was always drawing.
I deal with everything in my life in music - everything that ever happens to me just finds its way into a song or onto a record. I need it. It's like my life jacket. If I didn't have that way of processing those feelings, I'd probably be a murderer.
I rummage around in artistic things from the past. If you don't understand the context, they wouldn't make any sense. I rummage around in conceptual ideas of the future, but if you don't know the source of the thinking, [it] wouldn't make any sense.
I know how stupid people can be. I've played in front of 5,000 people that bought a ticket to my concert, and some guy who's bought a ticket decides he's going to throw a bottle at my head. That's a simple act of stupidity. That's not even defiance.
The "joker" here ["All Along the Watchtower" ] is the older [Bob] Dylan himself, whining about exploitation, and the thief's rejoinder re-contextualizes the earlier critique into the religious frames that would become more prominent as time went on.
I grew up in the sixties watching B.B. King and Tito Puente and Miles Davis and Coltrane, everybody, Marvin Gaye, Jimi. And at the same time, with my left eye I was watching Dolores Huerta, Cesar Chavez, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Mother Teresa.
I've got a collection of songs that I've had, I keep adding to and they're all great American composers. I wanted to showcase American composers and I've done that on a lot of my records and played things by American composers that I really respect.
There are some things we can control and others we simply cannot. And our ability to distinguish between them is critical to our happiness and wellbeing. Sometimes unexpected stuff will happen to us or around us. Our true power lies in our response.
I have a really good idea for a novel and would like to just kind of try my hand at fiction. I'm starting to kind of get a really good body of work going from a literary standpoint. As long as the audience is there, man, I'll keep cranking them out.
One of my best friends was gay and Mormon, and I saw how conflicted he was. It was the first time my faith didn't align with my mind and heart and the first time I was being taught something at church that I was like, 'Hey, this doesn't seem right.'
A lot of people that embark on spiritual endeavors tended to, especially in the '60s and '70s, they tended to give up what they had before and cut themselves off from their lives, previous life as it were. But, I don't think that one should do that.
I really think music in school is vital. Some pivotal moments in my life were my childhood scholastic experiences with music - teachers who found out I could sing, and encouraged me, or teachers who turned me on to music or bands I hadn't yet heard.
What I do is I write mainly about very personal and rather lonely feelings, and I explore them in a different way each time. You know, what I do is not terribly intellectual. I'm a pop singer for Christ's sake. As a person, I'm fairly uncomplicated.
When I produce a record, I roll up my sleeves; I'm not one of those passive guys. I really get in there and make sure every note is measured. I tell the bass player, 'You have to play it like this,' or I tell the drummer, 'It's got to be like this.'
On our early demos, I was really frustrated with my recorded sound. I'd tell my dad, 'Dude, I want more 'cut' on my guitar - I want more treble.' And he'd say, 'Now, son, you don't want that. It'll hurt your ears.' But my dad just didn't understand.
I thought the best thing to do to bring me back to reality would be to have a child, and by the time I had my first, Taylor, when I was 25, we'd sold 35 million records as a band, and I'd had enough; I knew my sanity was more important than success.
No matter how good you are, at some point your kids are gonna have to create their own independence and think that Mom and Dad aren't cool, just to establish themselves. That's what adolescence is about. They're gonna go through that no matter what.
I think everybody has their own way of looking at their lives as some kind of pilgrimage. Some people will see their role as a pilgrim in terms of setting up a fine family, or establishing a business inheritance. Everyone's got their own definition.
I feel like with everything you do, everything you make, everything you experience, y'know, even the dumb stuff that you don't even really pay much attention to, like the mundane stuff that happens to you every day, it shapes the person who you are.
There is a dance only you can do, that exists only in you, here and now, always changing, always true. Are you willing to listen with fascination? If you are, it will deliver you unto the self you have always dreamed you could be. This is a promise.