I want to say at once that I frankly believe that Irving Berlin is the greatest songwriter that has ever lived.... His songs are exquisite cameos of perfection, and each one of them is as beautiful as its neighbor. Irving Berlin remains, I think, Ame...
We had a lot of riots. We came under attack from many of the police departments. It certainly wasn't some publicity thing. I was afraid for many years. We couldn't play in LA for many years. A lot of people got very cynical.
I bill myself as a naturalist because if you say you're a naturalist, it gives people a conversation point to talk about what you actually do believe in, instead of when you say you're an atheist, and it's really just a statement of what you don't be...
Every place has its own punk flavor, but they all borrowed ideas from SoCal. It's still a vibrant scene creeping into every crevasse of youth culture. When you hear grunge, you think of the '90s, but when you hear L.A. punk, it's timeless.
My mother was 13 when I was born. My childhood was pretty frantic, to say the least. My mother left when I was about 5, and Daddy started me singing in clubs. Then I started singing on the radio in Oklahoma City when I was 7.
If we can just let go and trust that things will work out they way they're supposed to, without trying to control the outcome, then we can begin to enjoy the moment more fully. The joy of the freedom it brings becomes more pleasurable than the experi...
It's being here now that's important. There's no past and there's no future. Time is a very misleading thing. All there is ever, is the now. We can gain experience from the past, but we can't relive it; and we can hope for the future, but we don't kn...
Letting go of someone we love is the hardest thing we will ever do. Some people never surrender to love for the fear of being hurt. But to not have loved, to not have felt the immense joy it brings, would have been a far worse kind of death.
Give me love Give me love Give me peace on earth Give me light Give me life Keep me free from birth Give me hope Help me cope, with this heavy load Trying to, touch and reach you with, heart and soul
Some things take so long But how do I explain When not too many people Can see we're all the same And because of all their tears Your eyes can't hope to see The beauty that surrounds them Now, isn't it a pity
I've had more misrepresentations than I can handle, and people have told the wickedest lies about me. A lot of them have taken their frustrations out on me, and I don't like that because it can wound. Not necessarily me, but those around me. Journali...
I didn't think I had a voice at all, and I still think of myself as an interpreter of songs more than a singer. I thought it was too deep; people thought I was a man. I had a very strong Jamaican accent, too; the accent really messed me up for auditi...
It's a battle between record company, between producer and between mastering engineer. Because the louder you make your record in a digital process, the more dynamics are squished out of it. Nobody knows exactly what happens, but the dynamics in the ...
Rock and Roll does have its limits as far as the aging process. You want to go out there and play while you're at your peak, right? I think that's encouraging us to keep going out on the road - to maximize the playing at the moment.
Certain things you learn through exposure. It's really the elements which make up any artist. You really learn by example. You learn by influence. And some people have a huge impact on you, and that's how you become the artist you are.
I am not so complicated or intelligent a composer, nor am I very interested in becoming so. I am much more happy doing what I know I can do than what I am not sure I could do.
When I'm dead, somebody can write my biography. I wrote a national hymn, an anthem, which I don't want to present to that country. But I have a deal with my wife - when I'm dead, she should offer it, because then I'm safe.
I always say it took me 10 minutes to write 'Cars,' but if I am honest it could have been even less than that - and it has been a really successful song over the years. It is still massively used, in advertising, in films, and people do cover version...
I'd see an old person on the street and start crying. I couldn't understand how people could cope, knowing they only had so long left. It would be like dominoes and then the last one fell and I'm a little heap on the floor. Doctors put me on anti-dep...
'Are 'Friends' Electric?' was two songs: the verse part and the talking part. Two different songs I couldn't finish. One day I was playing the main verse part of 'Are 'Friends' Electric?' and after a few minutes I got frustrated, as normal, then star...
I realized at one point that David and I had not made a record together in almost 26 years and I thought that that was absurd because, first of all it had gone so fast, I didn't really realize, neither did David, that it had been that long.
