I've always loved doing covers. Some artists don't like covers. Some listeners don't like covers. But I love them. It gives you a new perspective production-wise. It's easier for me, if I'm starting a new record, I like to produce a few songs that ar...
Too many times you come across lyrics that sound like you've heard them before or you can't really relate to them. And I think that I write songs that sound fresh and sensual in kind of a layered, lush way. But I also think that they are real, and th...
As one who was a prosecutor for many years, I can tell you that having a tape recording of interrogations would help everybody. It would make clear if there had been improper pressure exerted on a defendant or witness, and it would also protect the i...
I'm a big fan of the American Tapes label. But that's very hard to keep a grip on that because you blink your eyes and they've released three records, all of which are limited edition, all sold at one show. So you have to follow in drips and drops on...
Call it a hunch, but I sense that many of us are not entirely comfortable with a world in which every single thing we buy creates a cloud of data. I'd like to have an option to not have a record of how much I tipped, or what I bought at 1:08 A.M. at ...
The people and the cultures of what is known as Africa are older than the word 'Africa.' According to most records, old and new, Africans are the oldest people on the face of the earth. The people now called Africans not only influenced the Greeks an...
I still have my first paycheck. It was just, I think, a dollar or two that I got when I started as a songwriter with BMI, and I had some songs there that I had through the company, and in the mail I got this big old check for, like, a dollar and a ha...
I've done panel shows, which I enjoy, and on those you're recording half-an-hour of TV and sometimes they film for two hours. But with 'Britain's Got Talent,' you're on camera for eight hours, with a large theatre audience watching - and in between y...
My favorite Galaxie 500 album is the first one, 'Today,' recorded in three days at Noise New York and produced by Kramer. It contains my favorite Galaxie 500 songs: 'Temperature's Rising,' 'Tugboat,' and our interpretation of Jonathan Richman's 'Don'...
Art is not like other culture because its success is not made by its audience. The public fill concert halls and cinemas every day, we read novels by the millions, and buy records by the billions. 'We the people'--affect the making and quality of mos...
People who are creative, who do it as a lifestyle, it's kind of silly to make that claim you're done, because you just never know when that spark is going to hit you again. You can't necessarily predict how you're going to feel. In ten years I'll be ...
Just look at the track record of these giveaway programs," I protested. "Broken mills, lower production levels of rice after 20 years of work and money. This can't be right...the only way this will work for the farmers is if they own it themselves, i...
People aren't buying records like they used to, so it's nice to try to figure out a way to make them do it. I would enjoy the same thing to own an old movie house, to try to trick people to come in - like having 3-D or Smell-o-Vision or Vibra-Vision ...
As a lawyer, as a private citizen, you see a lot of injustice. You see a lot of people who should have been punished and are not, and people who were punished wrongfully are not vindicated. Fiction is sort of a way to set the record straight, and let...
Certainly, the great record of forced labor across the South demands that any consideration of the progress of civil rights remedy in the United States must acknowledge that slavery, real slavery, didn't end until 1945 - well into the childhoods of t...
Now, if there were an Olympics for misleading, mismanaging and misappropriating then this administration would take the gold, world-records for violations of national and international law. They want another four year term to continue to alienate our...
Atlantic's Jerry Wexler believes first-rate records are made by first-rate voices. He certainly has worked with enough of them: Clyde McPhatter, Joe Turner, La Vern Baker, Ray Charles, Otis Redding, Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin.
I'm looking for a way out of here. I can't have it physically, so I'm going to have it intellectually. It was a beautiful thing to ride Seabiscuit in my imagination. And it's just fantastic to be there alongside Louie as he's breaking the NCAA mile r...
People book me because of the songs I write, not because of the sets that I play, per se... I'm sure I'm going to be moving to a laptop really soon, but I was one of the last guys to let the vinyl go. I was crying. In my room, I still have thousands ...
I don't take off as many days as most other producers and songwriters, so I'm working every single day, and I do songs every day. So it's just about finding time, scheduling, getting in and cutting the records. I make it happen and that's the name of...
When people go to a track meet, they're looking for something, a world record, something that hasn't been done before. You get all this magnetic energy, people focusing on one thing at the same time. I really get excited about it. It makes me want to...
