When public figures think they can open a business even though they’ve got no business experience, it’s a bad idea.
Whereas for me, touring tends to be a very strange and isolating experience.
New York has inspired more remarkable music than any other city I can think of.
You could spend every waking moment online and still only experience one-trillionth of what’s out there. I find that a little overwhelming.
We do all, myself included, we tend to hold ourselves to pretty low standards. But when it comes to judging public figures or politicians or people we’ve never met, we tend to hold people to very high standards, and, if we held ourselves to those standards, we’d always fall short.
I think there are two types of photographers, those who want to document the world and those who want to create their own world. I am more interested in documenting the world and presenting it to people with the question attached, ‘Does this make any sense to you?’
If Nirvana had remained a small, underground punk rock band, Kurt Cobain would still be alive. And he’d probably be living in Seattle, getting kind of fat and balding, be relatively happy and producing records for other people.
I made a record in 1996 called ‘Animal Rights’ that was a very difficult, very dark punk-rock record. Of all the records I’ve made, it’s my favorite one. It’s also the one that got the worst reviews and sold the worst.
When I saw music as a means to an end – more fame, more money, dating celebrities – that’s when things have gone terribly wrong. Now my life is focused on just trying to keep making music. Because when it’s really good, it’s just the most remarkable feeling on the planet.
I thought that my life would be spent working in a bookstore, teaching community college, and making music in my spare time that no one would be willing to listen to.
Shaving your head is acceptable. It’s when you start wearing toupees and brushing your hair over that things go wrong.
When I was growing up, I was the most pretentious person I have ever met. I only read obscure books and watched obscure movies and only listened to obscure music.
I think we’re like farm animals before an earthquake.
One of the reasons why fundamentalists are so aggressive in trying to promote fundamentalism is because deep down they know it’s arbitrary. If you’re comfortable with your belief you don’t need to convince other people to agree with you.
Scotland is one of my favourite places to perform: it’s really something special. Scottish audiences are just so enthusiastic; their approach to dance music just feels similar to my own somehow.
If you look at the history of popular music, the most successful musicians have started out being really marginal and esoteric. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Madonna. Prince. Bruce Springsteen. Fleetwood Mac. David Bowie. Public Enemy. Nirvana.
When ‘Play’ first came out, journalists didn’t review it; it didn’t get radio play. And then it became this big successful record and, I hate to admit this, I found myself liking the fame. I bought into it.
The good thing about working alone is I get a lot done and I can experiment more. The bad thing is I miss out on the gregarious, social way that most musicians work.
What sounds good on the radio is really loud kick drums and loud snare drums, when everything’s bombastic and in your face. It’s the equivalent of a houseguest who screams all the time.
The term ‘renaissance man’ is always bandied about. I don’t think that applies to me. You think about Leonardo da Vinci, and he was a painter and a physicist and an architect, and that is a true renaissance man.