Musicians From The United States

"You can't argue with facts and figures. Either people want it, in which case they pay for it, or it's two guys sitting around at the Plaza having a discussion, which means nothing. I mean, Titanic. I wasn't crazy about the movie. But you know what? I'm gonna shut up, because the people have spoken. End of story!"

"The notion is that if you want to welcome me with open arms, I'm afraid you're also going to have to welcome me with open legs."

"KISS is the number-one American band in gold-record sales. In the world, only the Beatles and the Stones are ahead of us. Every other band should be wiping my ass. The line forms over there to the left."

"Prostitute yourself. As far as I'm concerned, that's even braver than waiting for the public to catch on."

"Like any large organization, there are going to be some bad people. Many people go to church; not every priest is a good guy. But you . Wounded Warrior is an important organization, and all the various vet groups are important because, shamefully, we don’t have an amendment to the Constitution that guarantees if you volunteer to serve your country, and risk life and limb, that you’re even going to get a job, so that you can feed your family. It’s pathetic. ‘Hey, thanks a lot for risking your life, and you’ve been wounded. Good luck out there!’ The men and women of our military may not expect to get rich and famous, but at least give them a job for God’s sake, so they can feed their family!"

"Elvis is the king of rock and roll, who made white kids shake there shackle."

"Being a Jew, you realize your strongest weapon is your mind."

"We can't be The Beatles. I can't shine their shoes. I can't sing as well as Paul or John. I can't write those kind of songs. But they would die in my armour and my eight-inch platform heels, and Paul can't spit fire, so there you have it."

"I think Prince was heads, hands and feet about all the rest of them, I thought he left (Michael) Jackson in the dust. Prince was way beyond that. But how pathetic that he killed himself. Don't kid yourself, that's what he did. Slowly, I'll grant you … but that's what drugs and alcohol is: a slow death."

"The most important thing in life is to be a selfish asshole. Do what you want, piss off everyone and stop hanging with the guys because they're not going to get you money or sex."

"You can be a jazz player and be respected by musicians, but the rest of the world doesn’t care. [...] We’re going to play a game: name a jazz player that means something."

""Earth has never been in better shape…I know — climate change and a polarised political thing — but there are no more world wars. I mean, imagine what London looked like 60 years ago. This is the best of times. Unemployment in the United States is the lowest it’s been in 50 years — 5-0…More people are working. More people are making more money. Unions are more powerful." (2019)"

"My mother is probably the wisest person I've ever known. She's not schooled, she's not well read. But she has a philosophy of life that makes well-read people seem like morons."

"My skin is more beautiful than yours. I would be quite more popular in jail if I so chose."

"Every breath I take is a tribute to John Kerry."

"Tom’s late-'90s/early 2000s tone was fairly simple—usually distorted, with clean breaks and not many effects. His playing, whilst not complicated, was incredibly effective. He let chords ring out at the start of verses, employed palm-muting, helped bring the dynamics down so that bridges and choruses stood out more, played jangly single-note riffs, used octave melodies to counter the vocals, etc."

"I didn’t quit that band because I wanted to. I quit that band because I had to. Because when people give you an ultimatum about your family, what are you going to do? But the problem was no one was being truthful at the time."

"But really we wanted to do something that was more kind of different than what most punk rock bands are doing right now, where they are all dressing in black and acting pissed or sad or wearing make-up. Its just not what we are into."

"I'm going to usher in this entire new culture of the youth, obsessed with the future."

"I grew up as a teenager listening to a really lot of heavy stuff. I was definitely a Slayer kid and Testament and the harder metal. I was definitely not a glam rocker."

"...the most recent tracks I've written on (the debut CD) were ... Frozen' and 'I Believe You."

"(The story behind the name Celldweller) is hard to trace back completely but I guess in 1992 sometime, I wrote a song called 'Helldweller' and my studios and even places I have lived have traditionally been in basements. In cellars, so to speak. I am also a fairly introverted guy and I hardly ever come out. It was almost a joke initially from family and friends calling me a cell dweller or a cellar dweller. It evolved into Celldweller although that name holds more significance than that. Celldweller is more symbolic of an internal bondage, being restricted and retained internally so the name has many meanings. At the end of the day, it rolls off the tongue very easily so there it is."

"At some point along the way, people had introduced me to bands like Depeche Mode and stuff that was on the softer side of electronic music and that completely intrigued me because of the sonic capabilities and possibilities. I got intrigued with that and then somewhere along the way somebody handed me a Skinny Puppy record and I think that changed my musical life."

"...primarily when I write, I use guitars and organic instruments because that's easier to write to but at the end of the day, the electronic side of things, that's my true passion."

"Columbus, I guess it all did start with Columbus. ... To me he was like a virus, a disease. I spent a lot of time protesting, trying to figure out how to deal with this disease. I think we really need to put serious thought into understanding that we're dealing with a disease."

"It's like there's this predator energy on this planet, and this predator energy feeds upon the essence of the spirit, feeds upon the essence of the human being, the spirit. This predator energy can take fossil fuel and other resources out of the Earth, turn it into fuel, to run a machine system. But in order for there to be a need for that system, and in order for that system to work, they have to mine our minds to get at the essence of our spirit. In the same way the external mining takes place, it pollutes—we see now, people understand how it poisons the environment, the water, the air pollution—the mining of the essence, the mining of the spirit, mining our minds ... the pollution from that is all the neurotic, distorted, insecure behavior patterns that we develop. That's the pollution. Because in order for this predatory system, this disease, to work, we must not be able to use our minds in a clear coherent manner. Because if we use our minds in a clear coherent manner, we will not accept the unacceptable."

"The Earth gives us life, not the American government. The earth gives us life, not the multi-national corporate government. The Earth gives us life. We need to have the Earth. We must have it, otherwise our life will be no more. So we must resist what they do."

"This oppressor, this machine that has gone mad and run amok, it is berserk. They keep telling us, "progress.” They keep telling us “face reality.” Well, let’s deal with reality. Reality is the Earth can no longer take this attack. We can no longer allow this Thing to continue when it’s polluting the air, it’s polluting the water, polluting our food. They pollute the air, they pollute the water, they pollute our food, they pollute our minds."

"Our obligations and loyalty should not be to a government that will not take care of our needs. Our obligations and loyalty should not be to a government that has proven time and time again that it is the enemy of the people unless the people are rich in dollars."

"Sometimes when it rains, it's not that simple, when the sky has reasons to cry."

"There are insane people who wish to rule the world. They wish to continue to rule the world on violence and repression, and we are all the victims of that violence and repression."

"They are going to become more brutal. They are going to become more oppressive."

"When I go around in America and I see the bulk of the white people, they do not feel oppressed; they feel powerless... We see the physical genocide that they are attempting to inflict upon our lives, and we understand the psychological genocide that they have already inflicted upon their own people."

"The past is more than a memory."

"We have to understand who we are and where we fit in the natural order of the world because our oppressor deals in illusions. They tell us that it is power, but it is not power. They may have all the guns and they may have all the racist laws and judges, and they may control all the money, but that is not power. These are imitations of power and they are only ‘power’ because in our minds we allow it to be power."

"Every human being is a raindrop. And when enough of the raindrops become clear and coherent they then become the power of the storm."

"Forget me not, or I'll forget myself."

"So many people’s school experience contains at least one instance of being looked down upon because they didn’t care for one or more of the sacred mutant outcroppings of High Modernism, and they concluded from this that Literature is all about impenetrable stuff that they don’t like. That damn Hemingway with his crazy free verse."

"As far as “plot” goes, as I get older I more and more suspect that “plot” is really being used, in the many incarnations of this argument, as a placeholder for a whole cloud of qualities found (or not found) in certain narratives, some of which actually constitute “plot” and many of which do not. What first led me to suspect this is the fact that many of the sternest exponents of “I want novels to have plots, dammit” are also demonstrably fans of, for instance, quite a few Robert A. Heinlein novels whose plots can barely be detected even by advanced scientific equipment. (Not just later Heinlein, either; go back and look at Beyond This Horizon). As it happens, I like some of those books, too, and what I learn from them, and from thousands of other books, is that what matters isn’t the presence of a carefully-engineered, structurally sound “plot.” What matters is whether a book entrances us into reading it or forces us to decode it — and “plot” is just one of several methods of getting us into the reading trance. It’s a good method. It’s not the only one."

"This is stupid. I now have stupid all over me."

"Personally, I've been hearing all my life about the Serious Philosophical Issues posed by life extension, and my attitude has always been that I'm willing to grapple with those issues for as many centuries as it takes."

"Do we really have to wander around apologizing for enjoying plot, just because James Wood and a few dozen other arch-aesthetes sniff at it? It's like being careful not to sing pop songs in the shower because some guy in the local alt-weekly is a music snob."

"Book publishing was never a heaven “run by editors”, and it is by no means today a hell “run by accountants.” If our “sole interest” was “instant profit,” not only would we never do any number of the things we actually do every day, we probably wouldn’t be in book publishing at all."

"Where do you hear the songs? In the space between wake and passing out, the hiss down the left of the dial, the faces of the kids when we pull up to the show, in answering machine hang up messages, in glasses colliding, transmissions whining, where the music doesn't belong—where it lives. Everywhere, it's all I hear."

"My favorite wine is usually whatever is right in front of me."

"Trouble is a great deal of fun, and crimes committed without malice are usually forgiven among peers."

"Is it better to look classy or act classy? Act. But one follows the other."

"All you have to do is put all other concerns aside and your fondest desire will come true. Unfortunately, 'all other concerns' includes your health, financial well-being, interpersonal relationships, and often any inkling of why you had this desire in the first place. Good luck!"

"Money should never be the reason you ever do or don't do anything. I haven't paid rent in 3 months."

"Interviewer says "Maybe you can give us some chores that have to be done like Hercules had to do ten of them so maybe we could do ten of them""