For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside That it ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.
Time slips away and leaves you with nothing, mister, but boring stories of glory days.
From the town of Lincoln Nebraska with a sawed off .410 on my lap, through the Badlands of Wyoming I killed everything in my path.
We’re gonna play some pool, skip some school, act real cool, stay out all night, it’s gonna be alright.
I was unrecognizable to myself; I saw my reflection in a window; I didn’t know my own face.
You can’t kill your way to security and you can’t lead by scaring people.
Yeah, I had gay friends. The first thing I realized was that everybody’s different, and it becomes obvious that all of the gay stereotypes are ridiculous.
When I was very, very young, I decided that I was gonna catalogue my times because that’s what other people who I admired did. That’s what Bob Dylan did, that’s what Frank Sinatra did, Hank Williams did, in very different ways.
I know your mama she don’t like me, cause I play in a rock and roll band.
There is a real patriotism underneath the best of my music but it is a critical, questioning and often angry patriotism.
I’m not in any rush. I’m not somebody who, if I write a song, I get it out. That’s not something I’ve ever really quite done.
I was signed to a record label at the same time as my friend Elliot Murphy, who makes great records to this day.
I was in my late 20s, in the process of shaping my musical outlook and what I wanted it to be about, when I first encountered Woody Guthrie.
I can sing very comfortably from my vantage point because a lot of the music was about a loss of innocence, there’s innocence contained in you but there’s also innocence in the process of being lost.
Basically, I was pretty ostracized in my hometown. Me and a few other guys were the town freaks- and there were many occasions when we were dodging getting beaten up ourselves.
Until I realized that rock music was my connection to the rest of the human race, I felt like I was dying, for some reason, and I didn’t know why.
If you’re good, you’re always looking over your shoulder.
And whether you’re drawn to gospel music or church music or honky-tonk music, it informs your character and it informs your talent.
The release date is just one day, but the record is forever.
You can go from doing something quite silly to something dead serious in the blink of an eye, and if you’re making those connections with your audience then they’re going to go right along with it.