Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I don't want to sound like a self-help book, but it really has been transformative for me to take a look at my relationships in a new way and see my part in them. Everybody's going through that.
There were so many great music and political scenes going on in the late '60s in Cambridge. The ratio of guys to girls at Harvard was four to one, so all of those things were playing in my mind.
Superficial pop will always exist - there've always been Fabians - but when people like Dire Straits and Bruce Hornsby start having hits, it suggests that there's a revolution going on in music.
I've never shied away from country. 'Karma Chameleon' verges on country. Reggae and country are very closely linked. If you go to Jamaica, you hear a lot of country music. There's a correlation.
Being a musician, you want to be able to do the hardest stuff there is. People would think it's classical, but in classical, it's all on the page and the difficulty is keeping up with the music.
I would listen to Little Richard and Fats Domino and Chuck Berry, and I would listen to how they played their riffs, and after I taught myself that, I taught myself to play my own kind of stuff.
I definitely get nervous about if I'm going to forget the words to the songs or something. And I don't enjoy being the center of attention for an hour straight - I think that's really stressful.
I want my music, whether it's sung by other people or sung by myself, to affect the way the Top 40 radio sounds. I want to heavily influence it with things that have come directly from my brain.
I don't think you have to struggle to make good art. I think you have to be passionate to make good art. You have to believe in what you're doing. It just comes from when you lie awake at night.
When I write music, I know a lot of artists like Taylor Swift or Ed Sheeran tend to write from personal experience. I write from personal experience, of course, but I don't limit myself to that.
There were a lot of bad feelings when Lindsey first left the band. But there's been a lot of healing going on, growing up, maturing. The bond is a great deal stronger than what we first thought.
No one is different from the other. I'm very grateful that I have a diverse group of fans as well. We welcome individuality over here in my world, and I think that my fans can see and feel that.
My feeling is that I think writers in general tend to be self-conscious and it takes a bit of a leap of faith or just not giving a sh-t to write something you know people are going to criticize.
Being famous is just like being in high school. But, I'm not interested in being the cheerleader. I'm not interested in being Gwen Stefani. She's the cheerleader, and I'm out in the smoker shed.
Let me create great music, go in the studio, and possibly become a memory and a time stamp in people's lives - and just give the best performances, because I know that's all that really matters.
For me, the more I live, the more I need to write. The more I push myself to really live and really experience things and step outside of my comfort zone, the more the songs are allowed to flow.
The thing running through me is the same thing that writes songs. It's the fighter about to get into the ring. It's like, I'm not here to entertain you; I'm here to get this out, whatever it is.
Woody Allen movies notwithstanding, therapy, in the early eighties, was not exactly a hot conversation starter. Nor was it a favoured activity for dysfunctional couples or suffering individuals.
I like cartoons. I like 'Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends.' It's funny! It has things that kids wouldn't get. It's like, if you're mature, you get it. I like that and 'The Fairly OddParents.'
I have two favorite songs. My first is called 'Dance of The Robe' and it's a very powerful number where she is feeling the pressure from her people to take on the responsibility of leading them.
I'd just love magic. I'd love to be able to just click and transport. I'd be like a fairy little godmother, I think, going round hearing what people wish for and seeing what I could do for them.
People want to be successful, and they want to be acknowledged for what they do. Sometimes they make really great art and aren't. Historically, the best artists weren't. But their work survived.
I didn't want to make a record that was just guitar and voice, that was just the technology available to me. At the time, I remember thinking, "I am making a Faust album." That didn't translate.
I haven't really been recording in the last several years. I haven't wanted to. And even though I had to deal with Sony and now I'm on Universal again, I will probably put out a new record soon.
I'm fortunate I have this coterie of musicians around me to help take music to next level. Being surrounded by so much creative energy, so many creative people really feeds that creativity in me
I find male singers and what they sing about fascinating. It makes me realize how little we know about ourselves and how little I know about myself. It's interesting to see the male perspective.
I think the biggest thing is that I have fun with the fans on Twitter and Instagram and at the show. It's a fun time to be able to communicate with all the different types of social media stuff.
It just works better for me to discriminate between which thoughts are mine and which come from elsewhere, before I even talk about them or express them - it helps to keep me focused on my path.
During childbirth and hospice I'll sing gospel songs that my grandma taught me when I was younger, or something I've made up, or I'll hum. I just play things that I think the audience will like.
I'd really started hating music. I'd started hating all the songs, hating being in the industry, hating doing the shows. So I had to learn to love music again if I wanted to continue doing this.
I may not have the type of voice you like, but I can sing. You can’t take that away from me, ‘cause singing is a gift from God, and when people say I can’t sing, it’s kind of like insulting God.
You need to work at the craft of songwriting, but not only the craft. When I see people working both on themselves and the craft, and they combine those things...I just go, That's just fabulous.
In my writing with Extreme, there are heavy themes. The cover photo has me with a gun to my neck. I am not advocating suicide. I am taking the philosophy that man is the measure of his own fate.
I have an incomplete album that I want to finish. I have been thinking about the plan during my days in jail, I have sung rock'n'roll for forty years. After jail, I will continue to rock'n'roll.
We probably put about four or five comic books out a year and probably about two or three art books and various trade paperbacks - maybe four or five of those a year - and that's what we do now.
As they say in the bible, that you're supposed to rejoice when people die and mourn when they're born, because it's one of the most painful acts you go through in life, is being born, and dying.
But by the time you get there and you get home, it winds up being a lot of time out. So I'm getting the itch to build, I know that. I keep looking at my stacks of wood and what I can do with it.
It's not about me - it's like, "How can I help you?" And when you give like that, you receive so much. It was an incredible experience, but it also gave me that bug: I wanted new music so badly.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame traditionally has had a management style that is very supportive of American talent, first and foremost, over everything else. And I think that's right and proper.
It might sound silly to some people, but if anybody wants to spend time to go out and glide on waves, it just feels like they have an appreciation for the joy of life and must be an okay person.
It was really hard to find people to come over and play guitar and sing and write songs together. So that turned me into a songwriter that way, just so I could be able to play with other people.
I've always been independent. My father was in the army, so we moved every two years. I had to go round and bang on the neighbour's door each time to find out if they had kids I could play with.
In my mind I'm going to Carolina. Can't you see the sunshine, can't you just feel the moonshine? Ain't it just like a friend of mine, to hit me from behind, and I'm goin' to Carolina in my mind.
Hip-hop has been the guiding light of my life as a musician and a music fan. It's the one common thread through all of it from the time I bought my first record probably. It's always been there.
You know, there's still a lot of great songwriters out there who hand in songs. And there's a lot of brilliant singers and performers out there who sing other people's words. I enjoy doing both.
I usually think of art as having a measurable content of nourishment, whether factual or emotional or whatever, and I try to make sure that whatever I do has as much nourishment as I can muster.
One of the things I love about Africa is the amount of dignity and respect and humility you see all the time. You don't realise how often you're disrespected until you are surrounded by respect.
I don't think anyone in the world could play my father, look just like him, act just like him, and make you believe he's Johnny Cash. Joaquin Phoenix gets as close as anybody I think ever could.
Sam Phillips always encouraged me to do it my way, to use whatever other influences I wanted, but never to copy...if there hadn't been a Sam Phillips, I might still be working in a cotton field.
And for me, it's been, not only where I learned, but the people that I met there. Most of the people that I work with are guys that, one way or another, have been associated with the university.