Guitarists From Australia

"I'm aware that if you keep shifting there are going to be people who really respect you for it and just as many who go: 'There's no stability with that dude. I'm going to buy Nickelback's new album.'"

"Not being able to tour for Diorama was definitely a huge disappointment. I was (and still am) really proud of that record but i also feel like the response to it was better than expected given the circumstances. It inspired me to top it with Young Modern."

"Being someone who has been the frontman and the songwriter for a band that has been together since I was 12 years old, you do get to that point where you think: 'If I keep doing this for too long it's going to be all I can do' … which is why in Silverchair I kept changing."

"I mean we're living in the world of iTunes; I really hate that. What's going on now is that a lot of people just release three or four singles and the rest of it is just filler and boring."

"As soon as you have a man who has no problem with maybe even alluding to androgyny and who's known for having gay friends, the media jumps on it and says, 'He's gay,' or 'He's bisexual'. I'm embarrassed for them. It's 2015 and I have heaps of gay friends and I don't care about being flamboyant. If I was bisexual, I'd say I was bisexual. If I was gay, I'd say I was gay. I wouldn't be ashamed of it. I'd celebrate it. I'd headline Mardi Gras and milk that puppy!"

"I was about 14 when I realised I didn't have the same personality type as the people I grew up with. I wanted to be a really amazing artist – I wasn't like, humble, you know? I don't really have a logical comprehension of other people, I don't understand how other people are. I knew I was never going to be normal: white picket fence, get married, have three babies. I just wanted to nurture animals and have a miniature pig and miniature horse and a little cow and a couple of puppy dogs. That was way more interesting."

"There's a theory someone told me that the age you become famous is the age you're mostly going to stay forever. Which is kind of offensive! But there's a grain of truth to it. I'm always going to have that moment where I felt like, 'It's not going to be normal ever again.' Which is not a bad thing. There are heaps of good things that come with it. Now I can write whatever music I want, record wherever I want, pretty much work with whoever I want … I'd take that above being able to go to Bondi Beach any day."

"I would do the track and put guide vocals on it and Eddie really loved the version and said he wanted to keep my backing vocals in so my girlie harmonies are in the background. My 14-year-old self would have fucking died knowing that."

"That was on a TV show. There was this poor guy taking a rich guy through a hotel to experience the losses of the less fortunate than him. The rich guy is just complaining because he just wants to get out and the poor guy is saying you have to wait till tomorrow to get out. That's one of our least serious songs but it still has meaning to it."

"That [song] was about an execution I saw on tele, that was an ad I saw on tele. I got this video of an execution, and I just saw it, and I was watching it one night, and I had a dream about it, and I woke up and thought, 'Oh yeah, that's pretty cool', and I wrote a song about it."

"A Beer A Day Keeps The Doctor Away."

"Fuck, you see some weird looking people around here."

"Maybe if I point to my brain it will work."

"Buddy Holly was the geekiest looking guy in the world, but he had some really rockin tunes."

"For those who just tuned in we're the Beatles!"

"Every Australian band wants to stick it to the Yankees."

"As I travel around the country I am seeing something new emerging across regional Australia. It is a new way of doing things, taking the great traditions that made the bush what it is today and blending it with the new. There's innovation, new technology and new potential, it's almost as if there's a quiet revolution going on..... some people call it the new bush."

"The best AC/DC cover I've heard? There was an all-girl cover band in America, the Hell's Belles."

"Angus Young's frantic over-the-top soloing has sparked many of AC/DC's biggest tunes. But beneath the reckless theatrics and naughty schoolboy images lurks a skilled guitarist."

"You should hear me on my own. It’s horrendous. I saw Deep Purple live once and I paid money for it and I thought, Geez, this is ridiculous.’"

"We're a rock group. We're noisy, rowdy, sensational and weird."

"It's just rock and roll. A lot of times we get criticized for it. A lot of music papers come out with: 'When are they going to stop playing these three chords?' If you believe you shouldn't play just three chords it's pretty silly on their part. To us, the simpler a song is, the better, 'cause it's more in line with what the person on the street is."

"We want to appeal to everyone and get rich quick. We want to be millionaires. I've got this plan to buy Tasmania you see..."

"I don't like to play above or below people's heads. Basically, I just like to get up in front of a crowd and rip it up."

"If it was happening, I'd call it Heavenly Beast. If it wasn't happening, I usually call it Arsehole."

"I love the music from Nat King Cole, BB King, Albert King... When I think of it, I wouldn't mind being renamed Angus King."

"I'm sick and tired of people saying that we put out 11 albums that sound exactly the same. In fact, we've put out 12 albums that sound exactly the same."

"Opportunity only knocks once, but temptation leans on the doorbell."

"Winning isn't everything, but losing is nothing."

"Laughter is the only tranquillizer with no side effects."

"They say familiarity breeds contempt but I hardly know you."

"No-one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

"The best way to save money is not to lose it."

"Friends are the family you can pick."

"If this is heaven ahm bailin' out!"

"Ah wassa born... And Lord shakin', even then was dumpt into some icy font, Like some great stinky unclean! From slum-chuch to slum-church, ah spilt mah heart to some fat cunt behind a screen..."

"Punishment? Reward! Punishment? Reward!"

"Well, ah tied on, percht on mah bed ah was, Sticken' a needle in mah arm, Ah tied off, Fucken wings burst out mah back!"

"Rats in paradise! Rats in paradise!"

"He is an Australian artist like Sidney Nolan is an Australian artist - beyond comparison, beyond genre, beyond dispute."

"I'm looking forward to working with Nick on something special one day. .... He has an amazing gift, a level of spirituality and self-realisation in his writing you don't often find. A Hemingway or Xavier Herbert of our time."

"The song is heroic because the song confronts death. The song is immortal and bravely stares down our own extinction. The song emerges from the spirit world with a true message: Some day I will tell you how to slay the dragon."

"There was one review [of Stadium Arcadium] by an English newspaper where the guy really hated us and it was full of insults and descriptions about how terrible and worthless we are and how inane our music is. The guy mentioned that Nick Cave really thought we were a shitty band and printed a quote that Nick Cave had said in that regard. For a second that hurt my feelings because I love Nick Cave. I have all of his records. I don't care if Nick Cave hates my band because his music means everything to me and he is one of my favourite songwriters and singers and musicians of all time. I love all the incarnations of the Bad Seeds. But it only hurt my feelings for a second because my love for his music is bigger than all that shit and if he thinks my band is lame then that's OK."

"Nick Cave's making a lot of money, which is braindeath. I mean, going on tour with the same band for 20 years and playing the same songs–I don't care how you twist them, or torture the songs, you know? If it takes to be a posturing grandpa Wayne Newton-sounding bad Vegas-balladeer to get rich, I don't give a shit. I think this is lame. You know, he was one of the great poets and rocked like no other, but he's pathetic. How do these goth kids buy this crap? That's his genius; he's convinced goth kids to listen to their grandfathers' music."

"I heard Nick Cave for the first time on an independent radio station in Australia, and the way he uses words is breathtaking. And it’s very melodic at the same time, very anthem-like. He also wrote a book called And the Ass Saw the Angel, from the perspective of a fetus in a womb. He’s really arrogant, but he can afford to be."

"He taught me to never veer too far from who I am, but to go further, try different things, and never lose sight of myself at the core."

"Outside the world of politics, one person in the world of the arts I would mention as an influence is Nick Cave, another person who has been around since the late 1970s. He has developed and changed remarkably, whilst remaining true to his vision. He has been a great help to me as well, without his knowing it."

"I listen to his records and go to his concerts. That's the greatest compliment I can pay an artist."

"On 30 March 1983 The Birthday Party played Los Angeles. Me and all the guys from Black Flag went to see them do two sets at a small place called The Roxy, and they were thoroughly godhead. They were one of the all-time premier live bands. .... I see Nick about once a year, which is about as much as I see anybody I don't work with. But that means when I do run into him it's really great to see him. He's an excellent human and I love him a lot and that's the bottom line, he's one of my favourite people, and I think he's a tremendous artist. He has a great band, too. The Bad Seeds are a band I will travel a great distance to see whenever possible. What Nick goes after is so incredibly interesting every time, because it's always different. He always takes chances. The art comes before the commerce. As far as the music business goes, he's one of the good guys. He's the real thing."

"Nick Cave and myself got up and did karaoke in Brisbane one night at this Mongolian BBQ karaoke restaurant. It was just a bunch of normal, Brisbane folk. Me and Nick got up to do "Fernado", "Sometimes When We Touch" and "He's Not Heavy, He's My Brother". I was just playing the straight man, but Nick was doing the whole Birthday Party bit, with the kneedrops and the 'Raarrggh!', running up to tables doing the cabaret terrorist act, kissing old ladies. They took it for two numbers, and by the third they'd had enough and wanted to go back to, well, enjoying their evening."