I think that, given a real choice, people would like to hear something interesting, not something bland and right down the middle.
Rapping and singing are not two polar opposites. There's so much middle ground. And I think there's a lot of people who find that middle ground.
Ever since I was a little kid and first heard Jimmy Reed's 'Honey, Don't Let Me Go,' the blues has been in my blood.
Miles Davis fully embraced possibilities and delved into it. He was criticized heavily from the jazz side. He was supposed to be part of a tradition, but he didn't consider himself part of a tradition.
My favorite singer to this day is Nat King Cole. I've tried to emulate his phrasing. It is so absolutely beautiful to listen to his lovely voice.
There's a difference between the blues of the New Orleans guys and anyone else and the difference is in a chord, but I can't figure the name of it. It's a different chord, and they all make it.
As far as my favorite songs to perform live, most of the songs we did live were my favorite. If they weren't, I would have gotten rid of them.
I didn't want the Ramones being told what to be doing, and I wanted the Ramones being presented in the right light - the remaining Ramones.
I have an amp that doesn't have a master volume. It sounds awesome, but we just can't get an appropriate decibel level out of it.
People would be surprised at how much of an electronic dude I am, and I like new wave, post-punk and proto-punk stuff.
My concerns have been about myself and not about giving something back and putting something in, even though that's been in the back of my head.
Here in Seattle, I'm the most productive I've ever been. I don't allow myself personal distractions. I'm extremely disciplined here.
A lot of my friends were gay, so I was spat on on the bus daily, and I ended up in hospital a couple of times from being beaten up so badly.
The band set up in January and just started rehearsing. If there was a song, we'd just rehearse it as a band, and it would get arranged as a band, and it got changed around a lot.
Dot Hacker, to me, sounds like a collection of all my tastes. I hear four people trying to fill up as much space as they can.
I really love jazz, but I will never be a jazz musician as much as I dream. But, I think that the jazz music I love is there in my music.
The nature of touring is packaging acts together that have strong catalogues of music. It's about making sure that it's a winning combination. It's really about giving people value for their money.
I love playing with Jeff. That's something I never really say in the press, but he's my favorite bass player. I've played right next to him for 10 years.
I didn't write any music at all, and then, I remember Jon Anderson being very insistent saying that there were two kinds of musicians: the ones who wrote music and the ones who didn't.
I didn't want to stay in the Stones, and be stuck in a position having to play a music I didn't like anymore and that restricted me from doing all the others things I'm interested in because of time.
I mean, in the course of an evening, people will take a solo here and there, but generally it's all about the rhythm of that music. Dealing with the rhythm with everything. That's essentially at least my concept of what that group is.
