I have come to the conclusion - and I don't know why it took me so long, but nevertheless, I'm here now - that a lot of people tell me they don't get enough guitar on my albums. So I decided to do an album where the guitar would be the singer, playin...
I have been accused of being a very simplistic, very lyrical player, and that's okay. That just comes from the blues, which is my background. But every day you wake up and transcend. You can't ever rest on your laurels.
You can take things that Jimi Hendrix took, from Curtis Mayfield or from Buddy Guy for example, because we are all children of everything, even Picasso. But if you want to stand out, you have to learn to crystallize your existence and create your own...
When you fly to New York, sometimes they put you on hold and you just go round and around in a holding pattern. Sometimes in a concert, I feel other spirits in a holding pattern that they want to land through my heart and through my fingers.
It doesn't matter if I ever win another award or get to play another major jazz festival in America. I would rather not garner any of those things and speak honestly about the things that I see my people endure in this country and all over the world.
There's nothing wrong with the screaming style of singing, and I'll be the first to admit that it conveys an emotion. But I'm getting older, and I can't scream and shout about the same things anymore. The songs I'm writing with Stone Sour call for a ...
With 'Seven Deadly Sins,' there was a lot of personal stuff in there that I didn't even realize I'd been carrying around for awhile. And a lot of guilt involved, a lot of emotion, a lot of depression. Once I was done writing that book, I was able to ...
When I look at the system here and look at my position - not just as a basketball player, but when I look around me at the values of the people and the culture and compare them with the values of where I came from - I feel so blessed to be from Afric...
I would like to see more new productions of new material by new composers/lyricists/book writers. I would like to see people take more chances. I think because everything costs so much they're not taking the chances they used to.
Depth on different levels is so important to me. You look at a band like The Beatles, all their material has so much depth to it. And I want people to be able to run away with my melodies and get lost in them and take the lyrics and be able to relate...
Ages ago, my girlfriend had this little park near her house, with a bridge running over a stream... and I set up all these candles on the bridge. But when I called her and told her she said it was too dark and she wasn't coming out.
I wouldn't say I'm girl-crazy, because that makes me sound like a bit of a womanizer. That isn't really me. But I am quite flirty - maybe too flirty. I'm an 18-year-old boy, and I like to have fun!
I've found in composing that being simple and profound—having in-depthness in your music—is the most difficult thing to do. Anybody can write a whole lot of notes, which may or may not say something . . . But why make it complicated for the music...
I never have been sick. I don't even know what it means to be sick. I hear other players say they have a cold. I just don't know what it would feel like to have a cold - I never had one.
This is the key to the entire universe. You know what this is? It's not a microphone, this right here is your voice. This physical thing just amplifies it. Don't be afraid of your voice. You have a voice without a microphone. Use it and don't let any...
There's always going to be a little bit of autobiographical content to everything. It's how you lend some authority to what you write - you give it that weight by drawing on your direct experiences and indirect experiences from people that you know w...
Once I actually get in the studio and I start working, I'm fine, but it's just getting there and these hours of torment with myself and self doubt, thinking 'I'm useless' and 'Who am I, conning myself into thinking I can do it again.'
I'm very lazy when it comes to making the original sound. I don't go through amplifiers and different compressors and signal parts. I just grab something, whether its an old guitar or a children's toy that happens to be lying around, and record it st...
I always wanted to get out of Tokyo and in 1977, New York seemed like the most interesting place to visit. I didn't intend to live here- I just wanted to get out and see what was happening. I just happened to stay here then.
Actually, there was another band where we were three girls, around '84 when I met John Zorn, called Sunset Chorus. It was just bass and drums and guitar- we didn't make any records but we played a lot of different clubs in New York.
I'm a little bit damaged in about 15 different ways, and it's been nice that no particular damaged area has become a major issue. I'm a more than moderately healthy 65-year-old male who has gotten away with a lot of stuff.
