Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The freedom-hating gun-grabbers do not care about reducing crime or saving lives, or they wouldn't be fighting for more gun-free zones where the most innocent lives are always slaughtered. Those squawking the loudest for banning guns from we the people will not get rid of their we-the-people tax-dollar-paid armed security guards.
So many artists today will talk about green this or organic that, but you know what? What we are eating, I think, is really doing a lot of bad to us. I'm not sure if I'm the guy to do it right now, because I have to clean up my house too, so to speak, but we've got to start addressing this. Too many people are getting sick today.
I really don't want to be associated with the low-brow Black Metal genre. If you want to know what I mean when I say that, just have a look at an Immortal video on YouTube or something. It's so dumb I don't know what to say, really, and it's so ridiculous, we can barely tell the difference between the real stuff and the parodies.
A friend of ours said if the same laws were applied to U.S. Presidents as were applied to the Nazis after WWII, that every single one of them, every last rich white one of them, from Truman on would be hung to death and shot. And this current administration is no exception. They should be hung and tried and shot as war criminals.
There is a thrill of vulnerability at all airshows. There is no way of making everything completely safe. When the machines are being thrashed to capacity and the pilots are flying at their limits to dazzle, things are bound to go wrong sometimes. There have been some historic disasters, but the danger is a part of the attraction.
I know that New York is big - there are huge buildings - but, in fact, it's quite small and contained... I like it when cities are melancholic. When it started snowing, for example, I felt very lonely. I felt very comfortable and very relaxed. When that happens, I write. So I've been writing, not a lot, but I'm inspired every day.
You discover over time that music can be overwhelming. Unless the musicians involved understand this they can lose audiences. Spontaneity and improvisation are salient features but I also strive to make music that is peaceful. I want to make music that aids world peace in the same way that the people who shaped my development did.
And it dawned on me that I might have to change my inner thought patterns... that I would have to start believing in possibilities that I wouldn't have allowed before, that I had been closing my creativity down to a very narrow, controllable scale... that things had become too familiar and I might have to disorientate myself. p.71
Sometimes if I go to a show, someone will recognize me. But the neighborhood I live in, there's so many people who are in successful bands that it's really not a big deal. And I like that. I like the energy of going to lunch with a friend, seeing the three dudes from Yeasayer walking in, and saying hi to them. I think that's neat.
I am uncompromising to the point of huge dissension in the studio. And it's served me very well. My theory and my philosophy is, 'Compromise breeds mediocrity.' Obviously, you have to pick your battles, and the more success an artist has, the more they want to be involved in their own career, which is not necessarily a good thing.
Now we have to understand that slavery would not have ended if it was left to the Africans alone, Now, Europe understood that what they were doing then was unjust, but imagine the propaganda from kings and queens of Europe to convince their people that we were cannibals, idol worshipers, horrible people, bastards, godless monkeys.
I'm a light sleeper. I've never been one of those people who can put their head down and suddenly everything disappears. Nighttime is the time I get most scared, anxious or worried. In those darker moments before waking or sleeping is when I feel most, I don't know, I can turn on myself, and my imagination can take me dark places.
Everybody loves the underdog, and then they take an underdog and make him a hero and they hate him. But as long as they can knock you back down, it seems like if you're an underdog again, and things do surface, and they think this is real, 'these guys' intentions are genuine and sincere,' it seems like they will embrace you again.
Every year is different. I'm not getting any younger trying to keep it going. It's always a challenge. It's like a boxer going into a ring. You never can tell what's going to work and what's not going to work until you're in action and everything is going on around you. It's very intense and always a challenge and always a thrill.
I have a great body, I really do. But I want to be taken seriously as an artist, and wearing anything that shows it off will be a distraction from the music. That's how my signature uniform, my tuxedo, came about. It's classic and timeless. You'll see me in black, white, and a pop of color on my lips. That pop adds a little magic.
To look for some kind of insight or meaning in pop songs is not really - well there's plenty of other places where you should probably look first before you start looking for it in a pop song. I guess it was just because I was really into music as a child, and I wanted it to say more. It was the thing, wasn't it? And now it isn't.
Since we did 'Angel of Death,' I've had three occasions where someone will go 'Psst, hey. I'm part of this Aryan World Nation group and we're thinking of having you speak.' I'm like, 'Why?' And they'll go, 'You know.' I'll be like, 'No, why?' And they'll go, 'Aren't you... ?' I'm like, 'What? No. Go away. You don't get me at all.'
It took me quite a long time to realise that my maleness was cutting off certain areas for Yoko [Ono]. She's a red hot liberationistand was quick to show me where I was going wrong, even though it seemed to me that I was just acting naturally. That's why I'm always interested to know how people who claim to be radical treat women.
I think the Native Americans had the right idea about preserving and respecting the earth. Not just using it up. We are not the center of the universe and that we think we are will most likely be the end of us. Then nature will go on its way, with humans only being a faint ugly memory. And yes I am fond of animals or most of them.
I really like Howler and an American band on Sub Pop called Jaill. There will always be new bands that I like, it's always been that way. I still go out to shows. One thing I don't like now is this idea that all singing needs to be expressed at maximum volume with so much bullshit sentimentality - it's pervading regular pop music.
My childhood was very difficult. I had every childhood disease and then some, but my parents didn't mollycoddle me. They left me to fight those battles on my own. I guess that was very Canadian, very stoic. But it's good. I had to become a warrior. I had to give up hope and find a substitute for hope that would be far more stable.
When I first started making music, I didn't really know what I was doing. I just wanted to write songs. I didn't have a concept. I didn't think it through. I was just flailing around doing what comes naturally. It took me a really long time to step back and deal with what I was doing with any kind of perspective or self-awareness.
In the early eighties, there were a lot of artists involved with the music scene. All those young artists, before their careers took off, were into music. Robert Longo used to play some guitar. He had a band for a while. Basquiat had a band. I mean, people were always trying to mix music and art - in fact, I'm guilty of it myself.
The name Yunupingu means 'rock - rock that stands against time'. The name Yunupingu belonged to my grandad, like he was a hero in his time. It was passed down through the generations to my Father. It's a name that makes us understand who we are, where we're coming from and what our connections are to mother earth and the universe.
When I was a kid, I got caught shoplifting by a store security guard in Ellensburg. The next time I saw that store guard was when I got thrown in jail again - this time for not paying court fees. The guy happened to be in jail, too, right next to me. That's what Eastern Washington is like - you never get too far away from anybody.
I've always sought to get after something that's foundational in people. That comes through my faith, through my belief in life, through trying to hit something that's true every time. I think that's really where you move people, when you touch on something that's true, that's not based on fluff or based on a moment or a movement.
Every form of communication is for the purpose of feeling, experiencing, sharing. Everyone has their own intense journey through life, and you don't want to do it all alone. It's really meaningful to be able to share with people. Whether it's your political beliefs, or what goes on for you emotionally, or keeping track of history.
I am inspired by thinkers. I am inspired by rebellion. I am inspired by children. I have been inspired by love. I have been inspired by heartbreak. I try to take everything that comes at me in life. There have been times in my life that I didn't handle things... right. But even though you stumble, you still kind of get through it.
Sometimes the person that is best for you is the person right under your nose. I wanted to have a girlfriend in high school, and I know I would have treated a girl well, but instead I was just friends with a lot of girls. They ended up telling me later on, 'We're so perfect together,' but at the time, I wasn't the cool-enough guy.
I don't think I understood guitar rock as well as I probably should have. I don't think I understood bands like Led Zeppelin. In their era, everyone had such a regard for them because of them ushering in rock n' roll and this larger-than-life lifestyle. But then they had these songs that would just not stop. I didn't fully get it.
I had at one point this rather depressing image of some alien culture seeing the death of this planet - coming down in their spaceships and sniffing around; finding all our skeletons sitting around our TV sets and trying to work out why our end came before its time and they come to the conclusion that we amused ourselves to death.
Music, as many people have said, is the universal language. Of course points are made which make you think about things, but ultimately it makes you feel. And that's why people remember more songs that have meant something during their life than films. They start to define periods in your life, and that's kind of the beauty of it.
I mean, the thing about Guns N' Roses was that it wasn't trying to attach itself to the '80s, or anything that had to do with the '80s. It's just who we were at that time. We were doing what we wanted to do. That had really nothing to do with anything around us, except for the simple fact that we were rebelling against that stuff.
I'm just not somebody who can sit around doing nothing, and all of us in the Foo Fighters have our own things outside of the band. I'm not going to use the cliche that those outlets bring us back fresh and with new ideas, but what I will say is that it keeps us all feeling free - and that creative freedom is a very positive thing.
I never wanted to do music to get girls, right, to get popular, or anything like that. I really love music and I want to make it better the best I can. I can tell when something's real, or when something's put together. I can just feel it. So I'm my own worst critic and harshest critic and I just want to put honest music out there.
I really enjoy playing for hours and hours. DJ sets where you turn up over an hour and you're on a festival stage, people basically expect much more pounding than I ever would play. I just feel like a fish out of water when I do those. They want something really kind of aggressive; that's not really the kind of music that I'm into.
You hung with me when all the others turned away, turned up their noses We liked the same music, we liked the same bands, we liked the same clothes Yeah we told each other that we were the wildest, the wildest things we'd ever seen Now I wish you would have told me, I wish I could have talked to you Just to say goodbye, Bobby Jean.
One of the things my mom used to do - I don't know why she chose me, but she chose me out of her six children to take to the African-American church that was in the town that we lived in Springfield, Missouri. And we would go to the church, and we would sit in the back row, and we would listen to all of the spirituals in the hymns.
I'll force myself to sit down and read a couple of chapters of a great book or I'll force myself to sit and listen to some amazing music or I'll go see a play. I find that watching or experiencing other forms of art gets my brain in action. It makes me feel connected to the creative energies and then that tends to get things going.
The very first day that Hillary came over, we were working on a song called 'All We'd Ever Need.' But we never even thought about it until we had written 5, 6, 7 songs. Then we played our first show, and we all enjoyed it so much. We felt like it was something a special and different. So from there we decided to do Lady Antebellum.
In regard to music, I just think that it's always best to have an attitude of being a perpetual student and always look to learn something new about music, because there's always something new to learn. Don't dismiss something out of hand because you think it's either beneath you or outside of the realm of where your interests lie.
I have pictures of me sitting in the racquetball court in my pajamas with an acoustic guitar, and Wolfgang is probably just two-and-a-half-feet tall. I'll never forget the day I saw his foot tapping along in beat! I knew then, I couldn't wait for the day I'd be able to make music with my son. I don't know what more I could ask for.
I find the older one gets the harder it is to keep the weight off, even if one isn't eating very fattening foods. Once, I was able to put foods like those away, and they didn't show up on the bathroom scales the next morning. But that was when I was very physically active, travelling all over the world and burning up more calories.
Making a record is a lot like surgery without an anesthetic. You first have to cut yourself up the middle. Then you have to rip out every single organ, every single part and lay them on a table. You then need to examine the parts, and the reality of the situation hits you. Then you pop it all back in, sew yourself shut and perform.
Humans impart meaning and purpose to almost all aspects of life. This sense of meaning and purpose gives us a road map for how to live a good life. This guidance emerges spontaneously from the interactions of human beings living in societies and thinking together about how best to get along. It doesn't require a god or sacred text.
You get to a point where everything is so important. One day you have 'Letterman,' and the next day you're at the MTV Movie Awards, and the next day you have a sold-out show for over 15,000 people. You can't cancel anything, because it's just too much to let everyone down, which is an interesting thing about being in a bigger band.
I don't like to waste notes, not even one. I like to put the right note in the right place, and my influences have always been those kinds of players. Keith Richards comes to mind, and I really like Nils Lofgren's soloing, because he's so melodic. I love John Lennon's rhythm playing, and George Harrison was an incredible guitarist.
I have chronic - well, I like to call it late-stage Lyme disease and not chronic, because I like to think someday I'll be all the way cured. It took me a really long time to get diagnosed, and I was misdiagnosed for a long, long time. I was very ill during the end of Le Tigre, which was kind of why that ended, amongst other things.
When you work with a band, obviously you've got to present them with something they can get a hold of, so it has to be a little more fleshed out as a song. And then where it goes is more collaborative, obviously; it's more political possibly, certainly more a conscious process than a subconscious process, which the painting can be.
Monk was a gentle person, gentle and beautiful, but he was strong as an ox. And if I had ever said something about punching Monk out in front of his face - and I never did - then somebody should have just come and got me and taken me to the madhouse, because Monk could have just picked my little ass up and thrown me through a wall.