We've had a great change. Dr King saw to that. I was so grateful to see the 'colored only' signs come off the water fountains and bathrooms in the south. But the struggle lives on.
Growing up in Poland, I didn't have the experience of going to Disneyland as a child, so I don't have any childhood memories connected to it, good or bad.
Both Neil and I had done solo projects where we were the boss and I just thought that if he was willing to get into it, it would really be a good experience for him.
Well I'm a third-generation musician. My Grandfather's a musician and my father and mother were both musicians and so I'm a musician. It was just natural that I should be a musician 'cause I was born into the family.
I've always liked music that has a darker vein to it. I come from such a safe upbringing - very stable, classic family, everything's nice and good - I was always looking for something different.
I do remember my first purchase: the Partridge Family's 'Greatest Hits.' I got it for $3.99 at a failed chain of pre-Wal-Mart-type stores called Jamesway. God, I'm old.
My father had a brilliant scholastic record in high school and was awarded a college scholarship. Unfortunately he had to turn it down so that he could continue to support his family.
That night at Carnegie Hall was a great experience. When the thing was first put up to me I was a little dubious, not knowing just what would be expected of us.
Historically, musicians know what it is like to be outside the norm - walking the high wire without a safety net. Our experience is not so different from those who march to the beat of different drummers.
Let's say black, the whole black religious experience, here, is very impressive to me, because when I first arrived I realized that people carry their faith with so much pride.
I'll write about myself, or people I know, or archetypal characters, but the goal is to get at some truth, not to necessarily convey my own experience as an individual to the world.
You're creating an intimacy that everybody feels, that it's their experience, not yours. I'll never introduce a song and say, now this song is about 'my' broken heart.
Very similar experience happened last year when we released this album, North. It was on Deutsche Grammophon, it was very, very honest. It was the most honest record I've ever written.
For me, my awkward phase corresponded to an interest in rock n' roll. From experience, I'm guessing an insecure childhood is probably quite a common thing among people who start a rock band.
We've all had that experience where we hear a song that we've liked for many years, and we finally hear what the writer tells us what it's about, and you're often disappointed.
When I started out, I was absolutely awful, I had no voice, I didn't have a lot of stage presence and most of the interpretive intensity that I brought to the experience was actually terror.
While everyone's experience of oppression is different and complicated and often overlapping, I really believe that if you have privilege, you need to learn as much as you can about the world beyond yourself.
The biggest challenge for open source is that as it enters the consumer market, as projects like WordPress and Firefox have done, you have to create a user experience that is on par or better than the proprietary alternatives.
I suppose I was waiting until I was old enough to have some sort of experience to sing about. When you're young, it's hard to sing the blues. Nobody believes you.
Maybe I am skipping over the city and going from very personal things to the world, from internal experience to giant, far-away-from-space experience.
At 17, I signed a recording contract right out of high school, so I started touring and traveling the world. I sort of missed out on the college experience.
