I had been playing since I was 2 years old, never remembering a life without music, always playing everything naturally and mostly by ear, and all the grownups wanted were more scales and drudgery out of me.
Somehow you can tell the difference when a song is written just to get on the radio and when what someone does is their whole life. That comes through in Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Willie Nelson. There is no separating their life from their music.
I can't think of any musician or producer who has influenced me more than Brian Eno. From when he was in Roxy Music, producing Devo, the Talking Heads and My Life in the Bush of Ghosts.
In the course of my life, I've made some happy songs but it's the more sort of like pathos-laden, emotional, melancholic music that either I make or that other people make that really resonates with me.
I really do want people to listen to the music more than watch what I wear. There's time for that later. I've got the rest of my life to dress up and look nice.
I have absorbed my life now. I am ready for my music to unfold. I know time flies, but before the end of this year, the album will be out. Even if it kills me.
People in their early 20s are not often considered the target demographic for new plays; musicals have had much more success in exploring that coming-of-age period of life.
Retire? Not on your life. I have no plans to stop singing. What are you going to do when you love music? It's a terrible disease. You can't stop. Of course, I'd like to get off the road.
I've had more people in my life take their lives than... I think it's out of proportion with most people. I think a lot of them gravitate towards me because of the music.
Music is my number one, it's my life, it's my everything. I'm enjoying challenging myself; I want to raise the bar and set a new standard for Australian pop artists.
The music industry's actions at the time of 9/11 and since have been actions driven by patriotism in most instances, and greed and stupidity to a lesser degree. Sounds like real life doesn't it?
On reading the first part of Anthony Powell's four-part masterpiece, 'A Dance to the Music of Time,' I was struck by one of the characters - an irritating peripheral character- who keeps showing up in the main protagonist's life.
I've built my whole life around loving music. I'm a writer for 'Rolling Stone,' so I am constantly searching for new bands and soaking up new sounds.
But at this phase of my life, I want to write and not have to think about whether a song is going to be a hit. I want to explore the music that inspires me, and I don't want to ape myself.
The reason I like doing these acting projects is because no matter how much acting I do, I'll always have music in my life. I love having both.
Advertising, music, atmospheres, subliminal messages and films can have an impact on our emotional life, and we cannot control it because we are not even conscious of it.
For me, 'risky' is revealing what really happened in my life through music. Risky is writing confessional songs and telling the true story about a person with enough details so everyone knows who that person is.
I always want to write erotic music... Not only about the love between men and women, but in a much more universal sense - about the sensuality of the mechanism of the universe... about life.
I wouldn't call myself successful, just obsessively exhausted. The music makes me smile, the movies make me feel humbled, and the comedy saves my life every day.
You have to fall. You have to understand what that feels like. For what I want in my life, and for where I want to go with this music, you gotta be humiliated, man. You gotta understand what that feels like. It just makes you stronger.
Reggae has a philosophy, you know? It's not just entertainment. There's an idea behind it, a way of life behind the music, which is a positive way of life, which is a progressive way of life for better people.
