I really wanted to make the worst thing: the thing that even people who liked bad, terrible music wouldn't like - the stuff that people would ignore, always. Something really, really stupid. Something that is destined for failure.
Big companies are like marching bands. Even if half the band is playing random notes, it still sounds kind of like music. The concealment of failure is built into them.
The last name is pronounced Jill-en-hall. It's spelled with two l's, two a's. We have a song in my family; G-Y-Double L - EN - HAAL spells Gyllenhaal. It's a Swedish name. It's a family heirloom set to music.
People in my family and camp who grew up listening to rap music love 'We Are Young.' I've heard it play at weddings. I've heard it in graduation parties. It's a big idea and big song.
I guess you could say I devoted myself so strongly to my music that for awhile I forgot about my family. But I only get one set of parents, and I think I forgot about that for a little while.
Everybody in our family studied a musical instrument. My father was really big on that. Somehow I only took a year or two of piano lessons and I convinced my father to let me take dancing lessons.
For me, making music is about my whole life. The basics, the components, simple things - family, living, just going to the market and getting new fruit and veg. That's what keeps my blood flowing.
That's the beauty of country music - you have to get out there and earn it and work hard. And when you're on the road with big name acts, you realize there's no easy way to the 'Promised Land' in this business.
Dante Alighieri is a universal poet, and great creators, they are writing for everybody always. Every single verse is very moving, and the beauty - if we don't understand, we just stay listening to the sound and it's like hearing music.
But what you realise after you've been in the business for a while is that people develop opinions about you that don't have anything to do with your music, they like or dislike you for a million reasons, they like or dislike you for your last record...
I've always been one for show business. I like performing, and I used to get criticized for having production value. But now it's all that! People need to get what they pay for! Otherwise, just listen to recorded music.
In the music business, we all do different things, but we sit there and admire other people who can write a song differently or sing differently. It's not so competitive.
The truth is an artist like me who doesn't get the type of promotion that we see more commercial artists receive, and especially in this climate of the music business, you have to be creative about how you promote yourself.
I think that if I had grown up and had been in show business and the movies twenty five, thirty years earlier, I think I would have made a lot more musical movies.
I don't even listen to the records after they come out. It's outlawed in my house. My wife and my kids can't play any of my music around me. Once it comes out, for me, it's just business. Numbers.
We are at a crossroads in the music business: with the rise of the internet, the world we live in has changed, and the past is not coming back. But I see the glass as half-full: the internet and social networking are new avenues for the next Bob Dyla...
I heard this music coming out of the radio and it was 'Ain't Nobody's Business.' It got me. I thought, 'I can do this.' I decided just like that. No romantic story.
Is it not the business of the conductor to convey to the public in its dramatic form the central idea of a composition; and how can he convey that idea successfully if he does not enter heart and soul into the life of the music and the tale it unfold...
I've done well, I've been disappointed, and I think it all goes back to you. Of course the labels are going to be the labels. It's the music business. You are a business. That's what they do. So you've got to protect yourself.
My brother started in the music business, and I was an actor - we were both in the entertainment industry, but doing separate things. Then he went over to New Line and started their soundtrack department, that's how he got his foot in the door.
I love what I do. I made my first record in '57. I don't think I'll ever get tired of making records and writing songs and singing and being in the music business.
