Somehow the revolutionaries must approach the workers because the workers won’t approach them. But it’s difficult to know where to start; we’ve all got a finger in the dam. The problem for me is that as I have become more real, I’ve grown away from most working-class people.
Mostly folk music is people with fruity voices trying to keep alive something old and dead. It’s all a bit boring, like ballet: a minority thing kept going by a minority group.
You can manicure a cat, but can you caticure a man?
There were very few real folk singers you know, though I liked Dominic Behan a bit and there was some good stuff to be heard in Liverpool. Just occasionally you hear very old records on the radio or TV of real workers in Ireland or somewhere singing these songs and the power of them is fantastic.
I am going into an unknown future, but I’m still all here, and still while there’s life, there’s hope.
You won’t get anything unless you have the vision to imagine it.
I would like to say thank you on behalf of the group and ourselves and I hope we’ve passed the audition.
Guilt for being rich, and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn’t enough and you have to go and get shot or something.
I must say the more interesting songs to me were the black ones because they were more simple.
I cannot be what I am not.
Everyone deserves to believe they are beautiful.
Peace in your mind, peace on earth, peace at work, peace at home, peace in the world.
Nothing affected me until I heard Elvis. Without Elvis there would be no Beatles.
Of course it’s difficult to know what the workers are really thinking because the capitalist press always only quotes mouthpieces like Vic Feather anyway.
And So This Is Christmas; And What Have We Done? Another Year Over; A New One Just Begun; And So Happy Christmas; I Hope You Have Fun; The Near And The Dear Ones; The Old And The Young.
I really thought that love would save us all.
When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down happy.
I’d like to incite people to break the framework, to be disobedient in school, to stick their tongues out, to keep insulting authority.
I recently got into Haiku in Japan and I just think it’s fantastic. Obviously, when you get rid of a whole section of illusion in your mind you’re left with great precision.
Songwriting is about getting the demon out of me. It’s like being possessed.