The secret to longevity in the music business is to change, and to be able to change. An actor has to assume other people’s identities. A rock star doesn’t need to do that. But change is important.
I have a particular dislike for children’s films. I’m way past the novelty aspect.
I always thought my records were number one; it’s just the charts didn’t think so.
I just want to leave this world with a massive catalog of songs.
I love performing. I can get to be that person I always wanted to be – godlike.
I love being manipulated by what I see. I love weepies and romantic comedies where you’re reaching for the Kleenex at the right moment.
I don’t really do Japanese interviews. I don’t think there’s much call for me in Japan.
I don’t feel I’m thrown around by the winds of taste and fashion.
I don’t know, maybe Australian humour isn’t supposed to be funny. It’s as dry as the Sahara, and I think people miss that.
The body becomes the carrier for the work. It’s not really about the physical body; it really becomes the apparatus that carries and moves the work. I don’t really consider the body as much; I look at it as a tool.
Sometimes the song isn’t strong enough to contain the fiction, because memories are fictions.
I don’t really care who collects my work, black, white, red, yellow. You have to also be consciously aware of, what does this mean in your home? And how are you supporting this work and the message behind the work?
I’m always sort of looking for projects that I can sort of put out into the world, into the public sphere, and to somehow cause an effect. I want to be able to create projects that sort of are going to make people think and think in this sort of magical, sort of fantastical way.
You’re collaborating with people you don’t even know, when you’re making a film. You’re collaborating with people you’ve never seen. So, the collaborative process is very, very different than when you’re collaborating on a record with the musicians you’ve worked with all your life.
I feel very much a part of what I’m writing about, and I’m writing about things that concern me on a daily basis. I’m not really interested in writing musical diaries, if you know what I mean.
That’s what I like about watching a movie: you enter an imagined world that’s more interesting, more engaging than your own. Or less painful than your own.
I have things that I’m interested in, and I’m not really interested in writing about anything that I’m not interested in. But it’s important to me to be able to see it from a different perspective, and add something new to the whole picture.
It’s always a risky business inviting somebody on stage. You never know what they’re going to do. I try to avoid letting people join me onstage because it can be very distracting, and overly theatrical.
Everybody tends to overplay live. That’s just the nature of playing live. And that can be great, but it can also kill something that’s special, and intimate, about a recorded version of a song. You find out very quickly which songs you can play, and which songs you do damage to by playing them live.
Songs need to have the ability to change and to grow for sure. They take on lives of their own. Some songs just don’t have that capacity. They’re locked within a period of time. And as soon as you take them out of that period of time, they die very quickly.