When I write with Maiden, then I write only with the guys in Maiden, we don't do songs from outside people.
I think music needs to be presented in a way so that kids can grasp songs, dances, simple music that's associated with some particular defining moment in human experience.
My mum's family would all get together, with guitars, harmonica, mandolins and upright bass and play old blues and folk songs. That was normal to me.
We've never performed the song live outside of recording it in the studio. That was a dream come true because Whitney, she's an icon and she's been one of my main mentors in this business.
We went through this business of me writing out all the parts for these old songs from Gravity and Speechless and we'd been performing that, but we don't do that any more.
Most artists, you know, you spend their entire lives learning how to play music and write songs, and they don't really know how the music business works.
The kids of today have taken over the music business - most of them very young. Simply because they write and jot down a few notes, they have the idea that they can write songs.
Courage: Great Russian word, fit for the songs of our children's children, pure on their tongues, and free.
I enjoy being on stage with other artists. I have a chance to watch and see people responding to the other artists songs. I get to see how people are affected by the music.
Everyone knows almost everything about me. I make it very clear that I'm cool with people knowing all my personal life through my songs.
I would like to do a musical, if I could find a cool one. A song-and-dance role is closer to me personally than other characters I play.
It's cool when your husband starts to sing some old Merle Haggard song and I can pop in with a harmony and it doesn't sound too bad.
I try not to put messages in my songs. My only message is man's communication with his fellow man. I want to narrow the gap of strangeness and alienation.
There's 40 or 50 songs that nobody's heard that I've done in between albums. There's a whole evolution from Midnite Vultures to Sea Change that's never been released.
When we try to write a pop song, we go for standard pop arrangements, even to the point where we will go to the key change at the end, which is really cheesy.
In my songs, I'm not saying something that's never been said before. The have lyrics aren't going to blow people away. It's the emotion and the melody that drive it home.
Right now, I'm Writing song lyrics. Experimenting with a play. Toying with an idea for a documentary. I hope one of these will eventually be launched into the light of day.
As a singer, I just want to try to honor what the writers create - and as someone who's trying to write songs, I just hope I can stand in their company and not embarrass myself.
In this world of doubt, one thing is certain for me; that I will go on writing songs up to and - I hope, through heavenly means or diabolical - beyond the day I die.
I don't know if any genuine, meaningful change could ever result from a song. It's kind of like throwing peanuts at a gorilla.
I recorded a song called, I Fall to Pieces, and I was in a car wreck. Now I'm worried because I have a brand-new record, and it's called Crazy!
