I care about being able to play. If you're playing with integrity in the music, then that's what matters. But it wasn't that great for me because it was kinda like going back into the old times without the guy.
We started with Denny Cordell, and he was a great record producer. He knew exactly how to take a band that knew absolutely nothing, and guide you without trying to tell you what to do.
You can go crazy and play solos in the right place, and that's great because it can intensify and bring an emotional lift. But the thing is you don't want to get in the way of the song.
Playing along with records is key. And as far as equipment goes it has gotten so much more affordable and the drum sets are of great quality. I play Pearl; their Export Series is great for a beginner.
Jewish intellectuals contributed a great deal to insure that Europe became a continent of humanism, and it is with these humanist ideals that Europe must now intervene in the Middle East conflict.
All my vocals were recorded at home, which was great for me. You can actually have a studio in a computer program called ProTools. I did half the record with ProTools.
You can go down the list of great artists and kind of understand that they are products of their environment. Whether it's U2 or Henry Rollins or myself or Johnny Lydon, they're gonna be products of their environment.
A lot of other bass players have told me I'm the only bass player who plays with a pick but sounds like he's playing with the thumb and fingers, which is a great compliment.
There was a storyline this year where Taylor lied to Brooke. It was supposed to be set up in a way that I was so outraged by her that I let it stay. I thought that was human, which was great.
I mean, the great secret is that an orchestra can actually play without a conductor at all. Of course, a great conductor will have a concept and will help them play together and unify them.
I like to think of myself as Prince Charles's friend. He's a great fellow. There are always people trying to knock him, but The Prince's Trust is one of the biggest supporters of young people in Britain.
We spent a month in LA using a pool of musicians, a string arranger called Benjamin Wright, some great backing singers, and it gave tracks like Dynamite, which was written there, that kind of flavour.
Great cataclysmic things can go by and neither the orchestra nor the conductor are under the delusion that whether they make this or that gesture is going to be the deciding factor in how it comes out.
There's still a lot of great songwriters out there who hand in songs. And there's a lot of brilliant singers and performers out there who sing other people's words. I enjoy doing both.
Women do come up to me, and they tell me what they think! I've gotten great compliments on my eyes and my smile. But I don't see myself as sexy.
Kate Spade has great feminine classics and I love her bags. Designs by Rebecca Taylor, BCBG and Herve Leger are sexy and fun, and they work on my body.
Deep Purple definitely belongs in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. 'Cause they had great songs, great musicianship, they had an impact, and they're a huge influence on the heavy metal community as a whole.
Avril Lavigne sold a massive amount of albums and she has to top that with her next release. We have four great albums behind us, and it's not going to be as hard to live up to that.
That's the great paradox of living on this earth, that in the midst of great pain you can have great joy as well. If we didn't have those things we'd just be numb.
Not that there weren't great shows, and not that there wasn't plenty of fine music played. It's just that the consistency and the height of where we could take it, with the help of the audience, was less, I felt, in the '90s.
I always thought that Elvis could have been a great actor, and that he was put in a lot of unimportant movies when he could have done a lot of great ones.
