In '85, I went through rehab and I wasn't ready. If you're not ready, you're not ready. You don't want to hear the truth, and you're gonna keep doing what you keep doing.
I think your alcohol intake has to change. You know, usually a big person feels they can drink anything they want to and as much as they want to and I've cut that way back.
Just because you liked something as a youngster doesn't mean you have to like it as an adult. You can change your taste a little bit on the sweets and things like that.
What matters is this: Being fearless of failure arms you to break the rules. In doing so, you may change the culture and just possibly, for a moment, change life itself.
My whole drive is to make sure that music is a common space where we search for beauty and share it. It needs to be louder than any conversation. That's where we have to go as a human race.
Basically, any time you have a real life experience, that can be a song. Because no matter how crazy or weird you are, somebody's had an experience just like you, somewhere.
I want to give my respect, glory and time to the Bible - to the word of God - just as I want to give my respect and time to my work.
The place that I'm trying to come from and where I'm trying to make music from is when I feel like I'm able to somehow, like, transcend it all and just speak right to God.
I don't think I even knew how big we were at the time. It was mad. I gained a lot through East 17 and I'm grateful for being able to have that experience.
If I had been at a University I don't think I would have been able to have the experience I had in my Smithsonian work. I don't think I have been as successful.
Life it is not just a series of calculations and a sum total of statistics, it's about experience, it's about participation, it is something more complex and more interesting than what is obvious.
A few years' experience will convince us that those things which at the time they happened we regarded as our greatest misfortunes have proved our greatest blessings.
It's a great experience. Every time I see the belly getting bigger, and I see the sonogram and I hear his heartbeat, I'm like 'Oh, man.'
I know that every time I step on the stage it's a real gift ,so I try not to take it for granted, and I try to make it an experience that the public can really participate in.
I would hope this experience would help me if that NFL opportunity were to arise. But I also know that it's a totally different league. There's a lot more to it.
Most of my work has no conventional narrative, so it's not essential to have a beginning and an end - your attention can flow in and out of the experience rather than having a set entry point.
I always identified with that feeling of being an underdog. So I always was looking to connect with and meet people from other cultures, to experience people living a different life that I am.
The desire to share is not a vague, windy sentiment, not when you see the massive rise in live concerts in response to the phenomenon of downloading music... People want to get rid of the headphones and be part of a shared experience.
Every time a consumer walks into a retail store, experiences the Nokia experience for the first time and purchases that product. Those are the moments where you say, 'We've hit it. We've nailed it.'
Making an album should be an honest experience. It shouldn't be about trying to gauge where popular music is today; it should be about artistic expression and putting down what you want to put down.
Trying to get my music performed live by bar bands was a self defeating experience. It really just distracted me from what I should've been doing all along, writing and recording.
