One thing you might suggest to a young band is don't get involved in any kind of long-term contract because everything changes on a bimonthly basis: The way people hear music and access it, the way it is distributed.
I just have this deep kind of connection to reality of being like... in a way, I feel like a dock worker. I want to stay in connection with my dock-worker side, 'cause that's how I grew up.
I'm an example of someone who never made it to university. I did have this dream to be a musician. I felt that this dream had an expiration date.
I was starting to play the ukulele at the same time I was having all these conversations with [the late Ramones guitarist] Johnny Ramone, these intense tutorials staying up late and listening to the music he grew up on, and picking up what's a great song and what makes a great song. He was all about lists and dissecting songs, like what's a better song by Cheap Trick: "No Surrender" or "Dream Police"? Sometimes you'd be surprised by the answer. It was an interesting dichotomy between hanging out with the godfather of punk rock and starting to play the ukulele. They came together.
I think a lot of things are written from experience, but then you become a writer and talk about other people's experience and you tell stories. I mean, you can't just tell your own story all the time.
The phone conversation where I haven't had a smoke, it's like trying to talk without using adverbs.
I'm not a college graduate, but I don't know how George W.Bush could have truly believed that the flower of democracy was going to blossom in that part of the world, I mean Iraq - at least in part because the governments there are so tied to religion .
I just think that all of us in this room should have a voice in how the USA is represented. And he don't allow us our voice, that's all I'm saying.
I'm not having to show off or make a point about how good I am at doing something. I think I've always kind of been that way.
I would thank God, but I don't believe in it... It's like a movie that was way too popular. It's a story that's been told too many times and just doesn't mean anything... All I really believe in is this moment, like right now.
I remember back in 1994 when the Eagles charged more than $100 for tickets. They said, 'We ain't Pearl Jam.' That's back when records were selling and the Eagles had sold just about as many as anyone on the planet. And years later we're still charging less than them.
So much energy comes out of concerts sometimes, especially good ones that are really moving. And that energy, no matter how great the show is, it dissipates within two weeks or a month.
When you're inside and you have no control and when you're the 14-year-old version of Frances Farmer, you know, you have reasons to be angry. You have reasons to be angry when your parents, who are very sheltered themselves, make decisions as to what you should experience in your life and what's normal and what's not.
The word religion has such bad connotations for me, that it's been responsible for wars, and it shouldn't be that way at all, it's just the way the meaning of the word has evolved to me. I have to wonder what we did on this planet before religion.
If it's a band I like, I just hope they will survive it all. And I'll admit that if it's crap music, I hope they won't and it'll go away. Simply because there are too many great bands who should be heard in their place.
I'm over smoking. You know, I feel like I've gone on long hikes and gotten to the top of the mountain and I'm looking at something beautiful, some great huge landscape, and there's some of the cleanest air that's on the planet. And then I light up, and say, "Ahh, what a great smoking moment this is!" So it's something evil that's taken over, and I want control over it.
I'm making music for music's sake, and I have an audience I'm proud of.
Though some may think there should be a separation between art/music and politics, it should be reinforced that art can be a form of nonviolent protest.
Competition is healthy, if you can turn it off and on. When someone gets too cocky in victory, that can ruin the positive aspect.
I don't need drugs. Life is already tragic enough.
I just don't understand, if they see numbers [of CEO salaries]that represent people, how they can somehow skirt around that and morally justify taking or ruining those lives and leaving them with nothing. That, to me, is violent crime. It's certainly more violent than selling grams of pot to other adults.
It's not a bad time to be me.
There are times where I would keep three typewriters on a table, and I'd have three complete thoughts going. With computers, you make folders, files - I don't know about those things. I have sheaves of paper polluted with words and paragraphs. I found it a good tool for me. And it keeps your hands strong for guitar playing.
Playing music for as long as I had been playing music and then getting a shot at making a record and at having an audience and stuff, it's just like an untamed force... a different kind of energy.
When I was 13, I got my first guitar, and I could sort of play Ted Nugent songs, but I couldn't play the solos. But I could play along with entire Ramones songs.
