In the vacuum created by fear and ignorance and hunger and want, it’s evil, not good, that rushes to fill the void.
There’s a difference between suspecting a thing and finally knowing it for certain.
If you don’t change, you’re dead or dead inside.
Anything goes. You always find interesting things that way.
Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.
Let the desert wind cool your aching head. Let the weight of the world – drift away instead.
I grew up I guess you’d say in the cassette era.
Live the principles and the values. Almost nobody in America is living them. Learn the truth. Live the life of our founders. Be a decent, righteous, forthright honest man or woman.
You must see yourself as guardian, somebody who will preserve what is true and pass it on. Be a guardian. We don’t need militants or revolutionaries. We need guardians. We need leaders.
Whether you’re aware of it or not, any kind of collage idea becomes a part of how you see the world once you incorporate media and internet and video games and all these things.
When my nephew was 3 and 4, he would say the most genius things. He said, You’re hammer macho with FBI dogs. I thought it was just one of those great lines.
You can’t write if you can’t relate.
The years keep going by and you realize, Wow. Doing these records is such a process: going on tour for a year and a half, then you get home and you want to do other things.
Whatever you do has to be commercial and it can’t be too distracting – it has to be background music, basically.
Originally, the lyrics to “Girl” were really upbeat, and then it didn’t work for me somehow. You need the dichotomy. If you’re doing something happy and light, you need the shadows.
There’s 40 or 50 songs that nobody’s heard that I’ve done in between albums. There’s a whole evolution from Midnite Vultures to Sea Change that’s never been released.
Sea Change was so specific. From the beginning it was set what it was going to be. All the other ideas that I had at the time I had to put to the side.
I think it’s interesting being American, the expectations for an American guy, and the image that has to be projected. ‘Oh, I can’t wear pink,’ that kind of stuff. There’s none of that in Europe.
Set your guitars and banjos on fire and before you write a song smoke a pack of whiskey and it’ll all take care of itself.
The limitations are limitless.