My allegiance was always to the act. I wanted them to be happy. I wasn't owned by a magazine or a record label. And I was a very naughty boy to boot!
I hadn't been a recording artist all that long when albums came on the scene, and I was one of the first singers to point the way to how varied an album's contents could be.
I always prefer other people's interpretations over my own, so I'm not very quick to make explicit what exactly a song or record is about.
We expect to keep our writing sessions going until late spring, then to play some new material in a few secret club dates. The record will likely take a long time and may not surface until 1999!
The thought of someone spending $20 to come and see me and saying, 'Oh, I prefer the record and she's completely shattered the illusion' really upsets me. It's such a big deal that people come give me their time.
It's nice to be in a creative world that's kind of isolated, but you can get led astray down some pathway while you're recording that you might not like later. And there's a lot of time to get in your own head and stay there.
I feel like I am a celebrity for no reason, like people are resentful I didn't have to play bars for 10 years to get a record deal.
After my mother died, I found, a little book of hers which recorded everything I had ever done, how I had done it, and how proud she was of her son Conrad.
The notes I have made are not a diary in the ordinary sense, but partly lengthy records of my spiritual experiences, and partly poems in prose.
There are such beings as vampires, some of us have evidence that they exist. Even had we not the proof of our own unhappy experience, the teachings and the records of the past give proof enough for sane peoples.
I believe that anyone can conquer fear by doing the things he fears to do, provided he keeps doing them until he gets a record of successful experience behind him.
What does New York sound like? For me, the Charlie Parker at the Royal Roost recordings on the Savoy label are the total embodiment of the New York music experience.
The idea is that we're doing it just for the joy of the actual physical experience. We may record something just for the fun of it, but the idea is just to be truly joyful and truly fun, especially for me, because I take myself too seriously all the ...
One of the things that's influenced me musically was my experience at Brown University. I was surrounded by musicians that I really admired, and felt challenged to come up with music, lyrics, and recordings that stood up to the expectations of those ...
I really do love Diana Ross; I grew up listening to her records. I grew up in a little town in Mexico, so while we got the music, we never got the experience of watching her.
It's traumatic to meditate on the availability of information through the Internet, or the way we perceive the world as a result. People don't experience things totally or viscerally anymore. It's all through representation, be it a record on YouTube...
Is it a coincidence that in 1998, Barack Obama talks about a majority coalition of welfare recipients and in 2012 we got a record number of Americans on food stamps while he's president? I don't think it's a coincidence.
Maybe a part of me recognized how right the improvising spirit of jazz is. Not the sounds, but the freedom to work with musicians who work that way. It felt very natural to me, but I think there's a way to do it without it being a jazz record.
We can be proud of our record as an international beacon of liberty. From fostering democracies in Eastern Europe to the stabilization of Iraq and Afghanistan, we have been true to that calling and helped spread freedom to oppressed peoples everywher...
There's probably a little more creative freedom in cable versus network, a little less of a committee looking over everyone's shoulder, but it depends on the network; it depends on the show; it depends on who the head writer or show runner is and wha...
I had all the material for a long time, but I was just too busy. Sometimes we'd sit around at home and sing some of these songs at family things, and everyone always said I should record them.
