I write music when I'm free and for no particular project in mind.
In America, there's more of the question, should music be political or should it just be for entertainment purposes, whereas around the world that's not even an issue. I think people just assume that music should be everything.
A lot of pop music is based on trying to make people remember it so that they'll buy it. To me, it was not about that.
In the last few years I've been listening to jazz more than anything else. I listen to a lot of world music and experimental here and there.
I've always tried to listen to a lot of different music from around the world.
I like African music, and I'm a huge Ravi Shankar fan.
People always ask me 'do you think there should be more bands doing political music?' and I say 'absolutely not.'
Country music is still your grandpa's music, but it's also your daughter's music. It's getting bigger and better all the time and I'm glad to be a part of it.
Marilyn Monroe never sold a platinum album. And more people know my music than what I look like.
The only reason that you do visual is solely for the visual. That's the only reason. It doesn't sell your music for you.
You have to open your mind. I like the ability to express myself in a deep way. It's the closest music to our humanity - it's like a folk music that rises up out of a culture.
I've seen whales calving in the waters off Maui, and I've watched my children being born. But music is the most beautiful thing of all.
Schools, the first thing they cut is music programs. They don't realize how important music is to kids.
I have a big problem with piped music. I like either silence or to listen to it properly.
I see music as one language. If one musical form eats its own tail, it dies. So it needs to be a mongrel, it needs to be hybridised.
There's no religion but sex and music.
I feel this music has nurtured me as I've been immersing myself in it. I've felt supported by it.
Yoga is almost like music in a way; there's no end to it.
I hate most of what constitutes rock music, which is basically middle-aged crap.
I write the music, produce it and the band plays within the parameters that I set.
When I was a child, I dreaded blindness. We used to ask: 'Would we rather be blind or deaf?' I said I'd rather be blind, even though I was scared of it. I couldn't bear not being able to hear music or talk to people.
