We try and stay out of the corporate side of it. The band has never compromised. At some point in our career we could have made a certain type of record and sold millions of units, as they are called.
When I released my first record, I was really in the middle of having made the decision to follow the clinical psychology path, which is competitive, rigorous, and fairly conservative.
I used to link up boom boxes, record one take, play it into another boom box then play all that back into the other one until I had six tracks. It was unlistenable!
If a politician murders his mother, the first response of the press or of his opponents will likely be not that it was a terrible thing to do, but rather that in a statement made six years before he had gone on record as being opposed to matricide.
My son was five months old, and I built a makeshift studio in my living room so that I could do the attachment parenting approach and write the record at the same time. That was fortuitous, that we could build that in the house.
Don't give up, be positive and if you know someone who knows someone at a record company don't stop beating down their door till you get heard. Don't ever say it'll never happen or it'll never happen.
When you hear a large symphony orchestra. for instance, in a concert hall, there's a big, sweeping sound that just doesn't get on to a record.
We didn't start out to make a protest record at all. That would have been too shallow. As usual, it was simply a case of absorbing what's going on around us.
When we start to write for a new record, we never really know what we're doing. We don't come into the room with a set of ideas, but miraculously, a song comes out of it.
What changed our lives forever was when Malcolm had the idea to sell rock 'n roll records to trendy customers.
France generates a significant part of its energy requirements from fission reactors and these have achieved a perfect safety record. We build ours all differently.
I need to go someplace faraway that doesn't have telephones and doesn't have a record player and doesn't have movie theaters and people walking down the street in order to not do anything.
I'd like my records to reach as many people as possible, but I'm also thinking in terms of how I can keep from getting jaded or unhappy with the process.
My father was a jazz listener, and I think, at least before I was 5, I was not so into that. Although there were records that emphasized percussion that I liked, like Baby Dodds.
There are a lot of obligations when you put out a record and it does well. People want to talk to you, which is nice. So then you make sure you do that.
When you're doing voice work, you're in a bubble where you just think about the story and the words. They record you on video while you're doing the voice work, so they capture how your face is moving and the gestures you make.
When you record an album and it goes platinum... yeah, you're in the studio and you work hard for months, but it's not like your whole body hurts. Maybe you get a little hoarse and tired. But on 'Dancing With the Stars,' everything hurts.
I hardly ever watch my own work. I just end up picking myself apart! I can't even stand to hear myself on voicemail. the sound of my own voice is like nails on a chalkboard. The same goes for my records.
And it took me about 11 years to get a record deal, and I just had to work around and come to terms with the fact that what I was doing was going to be different, and I just had to wait until somebody was ready to jump on the bandwagon.
I don't have much of a problem with interruptions. I keep a detailed record of paint and materials as a work on each painting. I can restart exactly where I left off.
I'm pursuing soundtrack work in the southern California area and down the line I plan to make a moody, intense acoustic album. Not all acoustic, but an acoustic - oriented guitar record that I've already written most of the material for.
