When I am in Africa, I always have the feeling that it’s where everything started. When I am in New York, I know it is where everything ended up.
For me, jazz will always be the soundtrack of the civil rights movement.
I have been curious about Haiti for many years. The history of the country is as fascinating as it is turbulent.
Early spring is the time for vigorous change, a preparation for the heat-driven oppression that is to come.
I have been an XL fan of Devo since I was in high school in the 1970s. Their records only sound better with time.
I try to get myself up and moving as early as possible. Optimum is to be on the treadmill while it is still dark outside.
Pride is a thing that I have tried to abandon completely. Try as I might, pride still creeps into many of the things I do.
I don’t need music for the good times. I don’t have that kind of need. Music doesn’t serve me like that.
Scott Asheton was a brilliant drummer, a natural musician.
A text conversation is a short exchange of often grossly truncated language that corresponds to a thought made all the more shallow by the process.
You can’t get your head around something if you’re yelling.
Whenever I write lyrics, in the back of my mind I always see a guy driving to work, driving to a really bad job, one of those horrible institutions, or one of those low squat buildings in Los Angeles. I write with that person in my mind.
A lot of Americans don’t have a passport, never will have a passport. Not only will they not travel, they don’t want to travel.
I always start tours with a great deal of anticipation.
The prison-industrial complex and the military-industrial complex are here with us and are multi-billion dollar enterprises. We can make more money off the kid in Compton if he’s a criminal instead of a scholar. It’s business.
I have always identified with Joan Didion’s depiction of Los Angeles and Southern California, ever since reading ‘Play It As It Lays,’ ‘Slouching Towards Bethlehem’ and ‘The White Album.’
My first visit to West Berlin was in February 1983. The drive through East Berlin, the fact that West Berlin was surrounded by a wall that was more than 100 miles long – the absurdity and intensity of it really knocked me out.
No child asks to get born, so when they are here, they should be shielded from any possible horror.
When you’re kept out of the adult world, it’s a blessing in disguise.
Adolescence is a plague on the senses.