My greatest reward is knowing for certain, as I do with many other acts and artistes, that without Jonathan King being alive and involved, Genesis would not exist, and the guys would have had careers as intended - as accountants and lawyers!
Gene Colan was like no other artist of his generation. His ability to create dramatic, multi-valued tonal illustrations using straight India ink and board was unparalleled.
These critics with the illusions they've created about artists - it's like idol worship. They only like people when they're on their way up... I cannot be on the way up again.
Part of me believes that the completed record is the final measure of a pop musician's accomplishment, just as the completed film is the final measure of a film artist's accomplishments.
I think I'm more influenced, just in general, not by blues artists, but more by stuff from Curtis Mayfield, Stevie Wonder. Stevie Wonder is probably my biggest musical influence of all. And Donny Hathaway.
They say the music you listen to in your formative years stays with you and leaves an impression for the rest of your life. For me, the things that I fell in love with happened in the '70s, when artists were nurtured by record companies and it wasn't...
Radio used to be dominated by Tom Petty and artists like that. If Tom Petty came out today, he'd be played on country radio - all that stuff would. I think the genre has opened itself up to more styles of country, and I think that's a good thing.
But I just love that music scene so much, and I enjoy really being around those artists and watching them even more than I do performing, because they are a whole group of people that do it because they love music.
I've done my time in being broke in Indonesia. Eating Goat soup. Australia's a developed country, you've got a lot of taxes, rents are high and its quite difficult to survive as an artist especially when you are just coming up.
I spent a lot of time on my own working out the physical vocabulary for how Gollum moved. As I say, I drew on a lot of Tolkein's descriptions of how he moves, but also the conceptual artist sketches.
I've known who I am as an artist for a long time; 'Idol' has shown me what I'm capable of. I know it's all possible for me now. I can go in any direction I want. I'm forever grateful to them.
I don't have stylistic loyalty. That's why people perceive me changing all the time. But there is a real continuity in my subject matter. As an artist of artifice, I do believe I have more integrity than any one of my contemporaries.
The physical characteristics of the child Jesus will always remain a point of discussion. No artist has ever produced a type, nor ever will, that has in it all that the varying minds of all time will acknowledge as complete.
More often than not, the fans really gravitate towards who's on the cover as opposed to how it's drawn or how it's composed, and so, a lot of the time, what an artist likes will be very different from what a fan likes.
As artists, we are so not in control most of the time of the content or the narrative of our characters, and sometimes writing takes a turn and it's not something we necessarily have control over. It's just a lot of random dumb luck, so when things c...
Remember: the ratings system is a voluntary infringement of First Amendment rights, an uneasy bargain between the needs of parents, the needs of artists, and the needs of large media corporations to make profits. Any time we chip away at the First Am...
I say nice things about Mariah all the time. I tell Mariah all the time how much of a fan I am of her. She's one of my favorite artists of all time... She's shaped a generation of singers.
With some artists, I've noticed that after their songs have been licensed, on their next album you can totally hear they're trying to write a song for 'Grey's Anatomy' and it doesn't work. It's just one of those things that has to feel genuine to las...
Putting out a debut album is a bit scary - I want it to be just right, so I took some extra time to finish it. Eminem's increased involvement has been such a blessing; I'm getting guidance from an artist I really admire and trust.
You look at most artists, the arc of their career, there's a definite decline at the end. And that decline could set in at any time. In your 50s, or your 60s and 70s if you're lucky. Time goes by fast, and you've got to be busy all the time.
Obviously, the Sixties was a time when everyone wanted to experiment, and then everything became very formulated and corporate, so artists tended to get pushed into a kind of pattern. Now, I think that has continued with the emergence of televised ta...
