The main issue was deciding what to play: Should it be old Ramones material or new material? I had about three albums worth of new material, but I knew that people would rather hear the Ramones songs.
All I can say is that I've had too many people in the hip-hop industry really like what I'm doing. I know where I'm coming from, and the album speaks for itself.
I'm a singer, not a politician, and I think you don't want the two to get confused. It's not OK to be on CNN talking about people starving and then tell the interviewer that your new album is coming out in six months.
Seeing Jennifer Holliday from 'Dreamgirls' perform on the Tony Awards telecast and later discovering Barbra Streisand by listening to her albums at the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh really changed everything for me.
The iPod has changed all that because sometimes I listen to an album from beginning to end, but now I put the stuff on shuffle and have the iPod tell me what I'm listening to, especially if I'm working out.
Do you realize that I have had five albums in the Top 30. Elvis and The Beatles have never done that. I had five singles in the Top 5, I mean, no one's ever done that.
It'll be basically a live album, but it will also include songs, Judas Priest songs, the audience have never heard before, because we felt we wanted to give the kids something else, something they haven't already bought.
The new album is a childhood dream come true. Got to sing with Ronnie Spector, got to cover a bunch of songs that were influential in drawing a line between the punk form and original rock and roll.
After playing so many songs in churches for eight or nine years, I've learned what songs people react to. Then I just had fun with the arrangements. That's how this album came together.
I don't want the big flashing lights and red carpet, like, 'Here comes another Bon Iver album!' I just want it to be my bedroom-y thing. But that'll take a while to figure out.
Recently, I've been working on anew album of material, which should be out in the new Millennium. I'm not sure which song will be put out as a single, but I'm still hoping to get another record in the charts.
A lot of the records you buy, there's nothing you can hold in your hand, it's all 1's and 0's, this digital cloud floating in the ether. but with analog albums, you can hold it in your hand.
We've had a number 1 album in the UK and that was a really big thing for me. So now all we've got to do is do it in America and that will have the domino effect of doing it across the rest of the world.
In the past, I've been a bit diffident about my own albums, almost excusing them for some reason, even though deep down I felt strongly about them.
I could make a whole album with no one else involved at all. It would be a total, unadulterated expression of myself. Because whenever you have others playing on a project, their influence becomes a part of it.
If I did meet somebody, I would only ever make room for someone that loved me how I deserved to be loved. Until then... I've got my shoes, I've got my album, my dog.
Vinyl is the real deal. I've always felt like, until you buy the vinyl record, you don't really own the album. And it's not just me or a little pet thing or some kind of retro romantic thing from the past. It is still alive.
You know, I was such a big Beatles fan, and when I'd buy a new album I'd invariably hate it the first time I heard it 'cause it was a mixture of absolute joy and absolute frustration. I couldn't grasp what they'd done, and I'd hate myself for that.
I don't do filler songs. I don't get them. They don't make any sense to me. Why would I literally waste my time on a song that doesn't hold up to the same standards as the other songs on the album? I won't play it live.
I've had this song in a drawer for a long time, maybe seven or eight years. Every time I'd do an album, I'd take it out and listen to it, and always liked what it had to say. Plus when Garth came in and sang on it, that made it really special.
They've got the singles and some people have burnt them from different web sites and stuff. So it was something that we talked about for a long, long time, and I just wanted to make sure that this remix album to be really special.
