I think much has been made of this alter ego business. I mean, I actually stopped creating characters in 1975 – for albums, anyway.
The younger people get into the lyrics in a different way; there’s much more of a tactile understanding, which is the way I prefer it.
It would be positively boring if minds were in tune.
I’m rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work it’s no longer his.
You should turn around at the end of the day and say I really like that piece of work, or that piece of work sucked. Not, was that popular or wasn’t it popular?
Songwriting as an art is a bit archaic now. Just writing a song is not good enough.
I don’t like talk and I don’t like talkers. Like Ma Barker. That’s what she always said, ‘Ma Barker doesn’t like talk and she doesn’t like talkers.’ She just sat there with her gun.
I usually don’t agree with what I say very much. I’m an awful liar.
I went to a middle-class school, but my background is working class. I got the best of both worlds, I saw both classes, so I have a pretty fair idea of how people live and why they do it.
I can see light at the end of the tunnel and it isn’t a train.
Sometimes I don’t feel as if I’m a person at all. I’m just a collection of other people’s ideas.
It’s always time to question what has become standard and established.
Aging is an extraordinary process whereby you become the person you always should have been.
I don’t know how many times someone has come up to me and said, “Hey, Lets dance!“. I hate dancing. God, it’s stupid.
A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle.
It’s only forever, not long at all.
I’m a person who can take on the guises of people I meet. I’m a collector, and I collect personalities and ideas.
Zane zane zane, ouvre le chien.
And the stars look very different today.
Music has both been my doorway to perception and the house I live in.
I needed to sing because nobody else was singing my songs.