I get a lot out of a show when I know that I don't know anyone in the audience and don't think the audience knows much about the music. |
I need to go someplace faraway that doesn't have telephones and doesn't have a record player and doesn't have movie theaters and people walking down the street in order to not do anything. |
I'd like my records to reach as many people as possible, but I'm also thinking in terms of how I can keep from getting jaded or unhappy with the process. |
In an ideal world, records would be filed in record stores by title rather than by artist, as they are in video stores. I think it's better to identify with the work rather than the people who make the work. You can put your faith in a piece of work, but not in a group of people you don't know. |
It's nice to be able to backtrack and not be embarrassed by the music you used to listen to. |
The first music I bought when I was nine or 10 was pop music from the '50s and '60s, like The Everly Bros., Elvis, Del Shannon, The Flamingos, The Platters, whatever I could get my hands on. And then some musical things, like Camelot, Singing in the Rain and Hair. |
The songs are not meant to be real life. They're meant to have a psychic - rather than a factual - bearing on the listener. It's rare that a song grounded in reality moves me because I don't feel like I'm getting the whole story. Songs are made to exist in and of themselves, like a great James Jones or Robert Louis Stevenson novel - they're not autobiographical, and yet there's a reality in every single page. It's real life of the imagination. |