Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You grow up and recognise that in an educated, secular society, there's no excuse for ignorance. You have to recognise in yourself, and challenge yourself, that if you see racism or homophobia or misogyny in a secular society, as a member of that society, you should challenge it. You owe it to the betterment of society.
You grow up and recognize that in any educated secular society, there's no excuse for ignorance. You have to recognize in yourself, and challenge yourself, that if you see racism or homophobia or misogyny in a secular society, as a member of that society, you should challenge it. You owe it to the betterment of society.
I'm really thankful to have my own record label. I've always looked up to people like Madonna when she launched Maverick Records. Even Jay Z and Sean "Puffy" Combs, who's a mentor and also gave me a shot when I was an independent artist in Atlanta. He came to my show, and he said, "I just want people to know about you."
I think me, Sean Bonnette and Laura Jane Grace, and a lot of the bands people feel that way about, we're just really honest in our lyrics. I think we got really lucky in that the right kind of people who would appreciate that heard us at the right time, because there are plenty of people that are honest in their lyrics.
There's no such thing as mental illness. We're all mentally ill and we're all haunted by something, and some people manage to find a way to ride it out so that they don't wind up needing extra help. So I think that "mental illness," as a term, is garbage. Everybody is in various states of needing to transcend something.
My tumour is a benign pituitary tumour, in the pituitary gland - which is the main hormone centre of the body. It's in the centre of the brain. (Fun fact, [Rene] Descartes thought our consciousness was to be found in the pituitary gland.) And the thing is, there aren't really many symptoms that show until it's too late.
It's what I like to call the horizontal Jesus. Vertical Jesus are the songs that say 'Lord I love you, Lord I praise you, Lord I thank you' and horizontal is 'I'm in a situation. This is the problem. How can I apply that now horizontally?' There are more problems in the world because he's not being applied horizontally.
The name 'The Beach Boys' is controlled by Brother Records Inc., which was founded by the original members of the Beach Boys and whose sole shareholders voted over a decade ago to grant me an exclusive license to tour as 'The Beach Boys.' With it, I've felt a great responsibility to uphold, honor and further our legacy.
I don't really get a lot of clarity in my everyday life and my interactions with people. Most things that happen to me aren't very straightforward. They're either vastly confusing, or I realize that I'm inventing whatever meaning I'm deriving from whatever happens and it's filtering through my own indulgent perspective.
Two hundred years ago, we were all busy farming and we all had a role to play. The home was a unit of production. We made food and all the things we needed, we took care of our kids and were connected to purpose in our evolution. When the Industrial Revolution came along, it took away a lot of the work the men had done.
People love to play 'Baby, I Love Your Way' at their weddings. They even play it for births and deaths - whatever the occasion, it seems to fit. Over the years, it's been used in lots of movies, and it's been covered by other artists more than any of my songs. I've written a standard... which is pretty incredible to me.
Go with your first thoughts; they're usually your best thoughts. Pay attention, stick to your goals and follow those guidelines. It's all right there if you reach for it, unless you want to punch timeclocks and work for somebody. That's what we liked about America, the land of opportunity. All your dreams can come true.
Each album has a different atmosphere. The third album and Houses of the Holy seem to be the two albums that people didn't get off on quite as strongly as the other ones. But I think they contain the basic ingredients for the further pursuance of what we're doing... the turning point to relieve the tedium of repetition.
I think, in the middle of the '90s, I made a couple of records where I tried to figure out what I thought the radio wanted from me. They weren't my best records by any stretch of the imagination. It didn't take me too long to figure out, 'Whoa, back up, dude. Just go back to following your heart, and it will all be OK.'
The way that you eliminate bad and ugly is either through activism and policy making that never tolerates evil -- instead of the liberal politically correct policy of accepting evil and accepting other points of views that destroy lives. We the thoughtful, productive people of American have got to take our freedom back.
The big cop-out would be to accept popularity rather than opting to try to create potent work. It's so easy to do the popular thing, the expected thing, and that's where you start to cheat yourself - and your fans, in the end - because there's an inherent dishonesty in pandering and dishing up what everyone's expecting.
I think that's the big difference between this one [Ordinary World] and a lot of the other rock 'n' roll movies. They're playing to tape, but Fred Armisen and I were actually in a rock 'n' roll bad together. I also really related to the character, especially when it came to the parenting part. I'm a pretty klutzy parent.
I always have wanted to know how the whole thing was done, what the process involved. And I don't particularly enjoy that my music is stripped of ancillary details, and it just sort of comes out of this big tap called the Internet like water. I like some of my water to be neatly presented in a bottle. With a label on it.
On the one hand, rock is so predictable, but at the same time, the basic idea that an artist can cut through everything and make something that they believe in or make something that they love or speaks to them personally, that it can cut through the bullshit. But at the same time, the cliches of sincerity can kill that.
Basically you're doing the best you possibly could do and until it's out there and until people are hearing good feedback, I guess that's how you know you've done something good. We're so close to it that it's hard to look outside because we're inside of it, so it's really nice when you hear good feedback on the outside.
I don't sing now, because I had polio when I was 15, bulbar polio. This was when the epidemic was happening. And I was lucky that it didn't affect my lungs or my legs. It went to my face and kind of paralyzed my vocal chords, and I wasn't able to sing. And they said I was very lucky that I would get over it, which I did.
I grew up poor in crappy situations... various crappy situations. What kept me sane was reading and music. I had so many different literary tastes growing up, be it fiction like Stephen King or Piers Anthony or non-fiction like reading Hunter S. Thompson essays or reading the Beats. I was a huge fan of the Beat movement.
What frustrated us about the song [Robots] was not that it existed - we owe a lot to that song and have had a ton of fun playing it. The problem was that it was a "given".It was like everyone was waiting for it to happen, and then it better be as crazy as the time they saw it before. Started to feel like dancing monkeys.
I can still picture myself riding in the back of a Bronco to a field party after a rainstorm. My mama will kill me for saying this, but my first beer, I was 15 and I didn't know what to do with it. I thought you were supposed to chug it. So I just downed the whole thing in one gulp. All my friends were like, 'Duuuuuuude!
We believe that we can use interactivity to create meaningful games. Games with emotions and virtual actors telling you something. Resonating with you as a human being, giving you food for thought. We don't need to deliver messages or whatever, just need to create a moment in time that will leave an imprint in your mind.
When I did 'Frankenstein,' the record company said, 'Now you can do 'Dracula' and 'Wolf Man' and we'll call the whole thing Monster Rock!' and I said, 'No, that's not going to happen, I'm not going to do that.' I kind of enjoy defying categorization. I love music in and of itself. I love the beauty of harmony and rhythm.
If you want to get together in any exclusive situation and have people love you, fine - but to hang all this desperate sociology on the idea of The Cloud-Guy who has The Big Book, who knows if you've been bad or good - and CARES about any of it - to hang it all on that, folks, is the chimpanzee part of the brain working.
Most people who are on the road are pretty damaged. It's an escapist's life. It's not a life that forces you to look in the mirror at where you're at and what you're doing. It's one where you leave the mirror behind. I think that appeals to something in all of us. On the open road, all of your regrets are out the window.
My mother, a very eclectic listener, had the first Doors album and gave it to me when I expressed interest in the band. It was one of the first records I ever had. As the years passed, the babysitters who used to look after me would bring their Doors albums to the apartment, and that's how I got to hear their later work.
I think we're great. I think we've still got it. And I think we've got something to give to people. And I think in times like this we can uplift people. We're doing it for ourselves, I'm not gonna lie. We wanted to announce our reunion the day after the riots, but it was important to play together before we announced it.
I don't wake up in the morning and say, 'Jeez, I feel great today. I think I'll write a song.' I mean, anything is more interesting to me than writing a song. It's like, 'I think I'd like to write a song... No, I guess I better go feed the cat first.' You know what I mean? It's like pulling teeth. I don't enjoy it a bit.
We went in and recorded exactly where we were at that point in time. I think because of the quality of musicianship of the band has given it the longevity. I thought the music would endure, I didn't think I would ... I always thought I'd be dead by 30, then dead by 40 and on and on. Now I'm 55 so I didn't even die at 50.
I've always hated religion. It's the most guilt-ridden, horrible thing. 'My God is better than yours, and I'm going to fight you and kill you because of your religion.' I think it's just a sick idea. You know how people are color-blind when it comes to other people - I mean, hopefully they are. Well, I'm religious-blind.
I've always been very involved with environmental issues. I was fortunate to be one of the speakers at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero some years back, and Bruce Johnson and I served on the board of the Surfrider Foundation here at home. Locally and globally, we need to be doing everything we can to help Mother Earth.
Today, we're even into the whole sweat thing. They'll wear a [suit] jacket like this, but they'll wear it with sweat pants and sneakers. But I do think there is every generation - and it won't be as big as it was when you and I were those ages - but every generation all of a sudden experiences that they want to dress up.
Power over seems to be driving our very young species into a ditch because it's from an old competitive, "there may not be enough" kind of framework of scarcity. Power with is thinking abundantly as opposed to fearfully. Power with is hopefully where we're going - and where we need to go as a species in order to survive.
When one knows at an early age that their gift, talent and direction is musical, one tends to focus on that and let nothing interfere or impede the forward motion toward the end of that rainbow. And after 50-something years of rockin' out, you still realise there is no end to that distant rainbow until one's last sunset.
I've been doing my record label for 15 years called Dim Mak. I started my label when I was 19 in '96. I started putting out an eclectic roster of artists. In 2003, we found a band called Bloc Party, and in 2004, we started getting remixes for Bloc Party, and at the same time I was throwing Dim Mak parties in Los Angeles.
When I heard the idea of a Slayer wine, I tasted the wines they suggested for us. To be honest, I was a bit skeptical at first before I tasted it, but once I tried it, I thought, 'You know what? This is actually really good. A really fruity and round type of flavor for a red wine.' It's very flavorful and tasted awesome!
'Life, Love & Hope' is... I'm thinking 'larger picture.' I'm not trying to preach to anyone. We all get lost and caught up in our everyday problems. Your cellphone doesn't work or you got a parking ticket, you had a bad day at work. You can lose sight of the really important things in life; that's what the song is about.
Words and ideas can change or influence the mind just like music can - yes, like a spell. Regarding the effect of my "spells" I think it varies; my music communicates with some, and I think it has had a positive influence on the minds of those who like it. I hope it helped them see the world from a different perspective.
I was playing heavy metal when I was 18. I had to evolve out of that into an alternative consciousness about what it meant to change the way I played guitar, and the kind of songs, and the subject matter, and singing about child abuse, and all this stuff. I had to come from somewhere, and I had to take chances to do that.
Go on a living spree. While you're here, why not live it up? Make your list, then go be, do, and have everything you want. Live life to the fullest. Live a life of no regrets. Strive toward your potential. NO restrictions apply. This offer is good for a limited time only. Don't miss this opportunity. Go on a living spree!
A Klan member is not stamped from a standard cookie cutter. They come from all walks of life and various education levels and environmental situations which have led to their decision to join the Klan. The one common denominator that all share is lack of exposure to others who may not look like them or believe as they do.
I can still picture myself riding in the back of a Bronco to a field party after a rainstorm. My mama will kill me for saying this, but my first beer, I was 15 and I didn't know what to do with it. I thought you were supposed to chug it. So I just downed the whole thing in one gulp. All my friends were like, 'Duuuuuuude!'
And if I would have taken lessons I probably wouldn't have done it, and what forced me to do all this weird stuff on the guitar was I couldn't afford effects pedals, I didn't have all this stuff when I was a kid so I just tried to squeeze all the weird noises I could out of the guitar, which brings me to building guitars.
Music is so clearly a commodity now. At one point, maybe 20 years ago, there were still some rumblings about keeping the really sacred American popular music out of the hands of corporate advertisers. And those walls have come down, but now I think the logical reaction to that is that you just start making your own music.
In all the time I was with L.T.D., I was never allowed to do an interview by myself. I wasn't even allowed to talk on stage between songs. I couldn't get a publishing agreement or a production deal because everyone had their own little role to play in the group... and the money, well, anything split 10 ways can't be much.
It's very far away, it takes about a half and a day to get there, if we travel by my... dragon-fly. No, it's not in Spain, but all the same, you know, it's a groovy name. And the wind's just right... Hang on, my darling, hang on if you wanna go. Hear it's a really groovy place, with just a little bit Spanish Castle Magic.
I moved to Portland because Modest Mouse is there. I didn't necessarily mean to live there permanently, but I've got a really good feeling for it. The sensibility there really suits me. I happened to have grown up in Manchester, a city that was a pretty cool place to be a musician. It's close to Portland in a lot of ways.