Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
That folk music led to learning to play, and making things up led to what turns out to be the most lucrative part of the music business - writing, because you get paid every time that song gets played.
A lot of those ideal towns are all starting to look the same, the specifics are starting to disappear. So we need to retain a love for life, a love for one's family, a love for where one's really from.
I'm totally into new age and self-help books. I used to work in a bookstore and that's the section they gave me, and I got way into it. I just loved the power of positive thinking, letting yourself go.
When I first became famous, I didn't know if I could go where I wanted to because I didn't know how people were going to act. Some folks would scream and holler, and I didn't know what to do with that.
My mom, dad and me were a compact group. They instilled in me a love for the outdoors. On school breaks, we'd go fishing for a week in the wilds of Alaska or Canada. The land was always in their souls.
It's uncomfortable for me, but at least they're bouquets. They're not bricks or tomatoes yet, although it's gonna feel nice to get that big, rotten tomato right in the face, just get it out of the way.
Well, I was always a bit of a political junkie. Even as a kid I would read biographies of presidents and of civil rights leaders like Martin Luther King and Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington.
I always feel like a bit of an outsider myself, but as a working class lad, the system was always against me. The British system itself and then of course all the illnesses that were challenging to me.
Wait a minute, guys, I have always been on your side. I have always spoken for you, always tried to put on a good face for the state of Indiana. All of a sudden, some of you people think I'm a bad guy?
A lot of the time, I write in the third person, but I'm mostly describing my own ordeals. When those unsettled struggles prey on your mind, you become haunted. To get free, you must defeat your ghosts.
That was American Recordings. I said, I like the name, maybe it'd be OK. So I said, I'd like to meet the guy [Rick Rubin ].I'd like for him to tell me what he can do with me that they're not doing now.
We got to see Sondheim shows, 'Phantom of the Opera,' 'Cats' and all sorts of stuff. When you're 10 or 11 years old, it's just magnificent. The story-telling, the music - it lifts you out of your seat.
I'm just honest about the things I believe in. For instance, I went to a past-life regressionist, and he told me that in my past life I was assassinated. I'm pretty sure that I was JFK in my past life.
I always had to wait until something hit me, and I could write it. But when I would cut an album, to me it represented the time that I spent since the last one. Just the way I was looking at the world.
You've got your entourage and people that help you make whatever happen around you. Everything's crazy and you're not paying attention to your inner feelings because you're so busy. I couldn't take it.
I want to let everybody know that I'm from there, and country is Tuskegee. Or should I say rather, my country is Tuskegee. I was born and raised there, it's not just someplace I passed through one day.
When I was growing up, music was music and there were no genres. We didn't look at it as country music. Popular music in Tuskegee was country music. So I didn't know it in categories. It was the radio.
I like helping children. I have a big thing with children. You can correspond with the child, send something to them as a gift. You know it's actually getting there and you are doing something to help.
If I'm alone too long I think too much, and I'm not interested in doing that. That won't lead anywhere good, I'm sure. If I'm busy I tend to stay out of trouble. An idle mind is the devil's playground.
I've never been ready to do a single thing I've ever done in my life. I haven't been prepared enough, haven't studied enough, haven't known enough. You can never be ready. There's just so much to know.
I like to be provocative. I like to make people think. I like to touch people's hearts. And if I can do all three of those things in one fell swoop, then I feel like I've really accomplished something.
There is so little time for us all, I need to be able to say what I want quickly and to as many people as possible. Time passes so slowly if you are unaware of it and so quickly if you are aware of it.
I personally believe that I was... a previous life or something... a previous reincarnation, a bard of some sort, because most of the things I write about are descriptions of places I've never been to.
As far as feeling freedom in my career now versus five years ago... I think if I feel any more free it's simply because of the experiences that I've had, and the wisdom I've accumulated from that time.
I started speaking about what I was dealing with through my music, and 4 million women responded and said, 'Us too, Mary.' And I didn't know that everyone was hurting like I was hurting. I had no idea.
Meditation has been really helpful for me and music and great books. Deep down, it's just that I feel a connection to music and books when I can find that other people have gone through similar things.
I really like playing with Mike Doughty from Soul Coughing. He was cool. He opened up some shows for us. I liked playing with G. Love, he's amazing. God Damn, it was like the best live I had ever seen.
You are digging for the answers until your fingers bleed, to satisfy the hunger, to satiate the need.... And as you pray in your darkness for wings to set you free, you are bound to your silent legacy.
We're falling into a place where melody is somewhat lacking in music. Everybody feels like, okay, too much melody or too much harmony, and it kind of goes over people's heads; they don't understand it.
I used to play in the subway. If everyone tossed in a quarter, at the end of the day it would add up. It shows you aren't invisible. And it's better than being ignored, or kicked in the head, or worse.
As long as you have imagination, you never need to work. You never get bored. You could just walk around and go to museums and check out new movies. You could be busy in New York city for 10,000 years.
I personally feel like certain topics and certain issues aren't really being conveyed the right way in music nowadays. It's all very direct and to the point without leaving anything to the imagination.
Of course, you're not making records in a vacuum. I'm not making them for myself. It would be nice if I could get more people to hear them. But if I have to sell my soul to the devil to do it, I won't.
Everything that we do I pretty much want to be organic, so if that happens, then that's okay with me. But I'm not interested in trying to re-create what once was. That doesn't interest me; it's boring.
There's a certain fear of simplicity. I think that's the thing when you're younger as an artist you get this idea in your head that complexity equals quality. The more notes you're playing, the better.
Since I was a child, I hated having to deal with my hair. I hated having to change my clothes. As a kid, I had a sailor shirt and the same old corduroy pants, and that's what I wanted to wear everyday.
We learned we wanted too much. We could only give from the perspective of who we were and what we had. Apart, we were able to see with even greater clarity that we didn’t want to be without each other.
My daughter is one of my greatest inspirations. She's an environmentalist, she plays piano, she's raising money for the earthquake victims in Nepal. Every day she surprises me and teaches me something.
We shot the video for 'Broken' where both my parents grew up. There was always a strong sense of serving our country in the neighborhood - my father and all my uncles served, and most of them enlisted.
What's really fun is seeing mothers bringing their daughters to the shows. And the best part is the mothers know they don't have to worry about sexual innuendo in the songs. The shows are family shows.
The only thing I could think of - because I really don't like categories - but the only thing I could think of is inspirational, and I think music that is from the heart falls right into that category.
I grew up listening to a lot of Usher at 13 and 14. I have every Usher album that ever existed. So I grew up listening to a lot of Usher, Michael Jackson, Luis Miguel, a lot of pioneers in Latin music.
Roxanne Shanté was kind of the first female to really come out and get respected by dudes, because she went at dudes real hard and battled them and freestyled a lot, and really came off the head a lot.
You make a right on L, make a left on O, come to a green light and that's when you can go. You keep straight on V, until you come to E, that's when you see a big sign that say's welcome to Love Street.
Learn about the world, the way it works, any kind of science and anthropology, it's really an interesting place we live in. Evolution is a really fantastic idea, even more than the idea of God I think.
When I'm having a rehearsal and there are new guys who come in to try out for the job, I always let my conductor rehearse them. Because I don't want the guy to get bent out of shape, because I walk in.
My dad, being a jingle writer, and my mom, being a jingle singer, they hooked me up with some people when I was a kid that worked with children's jingle singing groups. I used to sing jingles as a kid.
I think that the fact of the matter is that metal isn't really part of the big picture of the gay, lesbian, transgender music scene. But it's certainly there. There's gay metalheads all over the world.
My thirst for knowledge and experience comes from the idea that once you learned something, it was time to learn something else. I missed out on a formal educational process, so I'm making up for that.
I've always been in love with that Delta-flavored music... the music that came from Mississippi and Memphis and, especially, New Orleans. When I was 14, I was in a wanna-be New Orleans band in Toronto.