I was in my late 20s, in the process of shaping my musical outlook and what I wanted it to be about, when I first encountered Woody Guthrie.
The story I have told throughout my work life I could not have told as well without Clarence.
I cut my bow from the wood of this tree of evil. Of this tree of good, I want a kiss from your lips.
Outside the street’s on fire in a real death waltz between what’s flesh and what’s fantasy.
Two hearts are better than one.
My soul is lost, my friend, tell me how do I begin again? My city’s in ruins, my city’s in ruins.
You’ll walk with me out on the wire, cuz baby, I’m just a scared and lonely rider, but I gotta know how it feels... I want to know love is wild, babe, I want to know love is real.
I’m just tired and bored with myself.
I got Mary pregnant and man that’s all she wrote. And for my 19th birthday, I got a union card and a factory coat.
Every good writer or filmmaker has something eating at them, right? That they can’t quite get off their back. And so your job is to make your audience care about your obsessions.
In the past, some of the songs that were the most fun, and the most entertaining and rocking, fell by the wayside because I was concerned with what I was going to say and how I was going to say it.
A great rock band searches for the same kind of combustible force that fueled the expansion of the universe after the big bang. You want the earth to shake and spit fire. You want the sky to split apart and for God to pour out.
We gotta get out while we’re young, ’cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run.
I still like to go to record stores, I like to just wander around and I’ll buy whatever catches my attention.
Tonight I’m stepping lightly and I’m feeling no pain.
I want a thousand guitars.
I want to spit in the face of these badlands.
The first day I can remember looking into a mirror and being able to stand what I saw was the day I had a guitar in my hand.
I spot a little stranger standing across the room, my brain takes a vacation just to give my heart more room.
From the beginning, I imagined I would have a long work life.
I grew up with a very big extended family, with a lot of aunts. We had about five or six houses on one street.