When I think of Mick Jagger still singing that he can't get any satisfaction in over forty years of being in the Rolling Stones, I have to conclude that he's either lying or not all that bright.
This is my 25th year of being on stage. A lot of people who I kind of toed up to the starting line with are no longer in this position. I feel very, very lucky.
Rarely do I do film press because I'm so low on the food chain of the movie, and for me it's just this thing I did for four weeks before the next tour started.
I think it is incumbent on anyone who can to lift human dignity to the highest possible levels, maintaining one's own and helping to raise that of others.
Someone like Ashlee Simpson, she lip-synchs on 'Saturday Night Live,' gets totally called out la Milli Vanilli, and no one really cares that much. It doesn't make me hate Ashlee; she's just taking instructions.
Nelson Mandela will always be the face of South Africa. The traveler passing through the country will see Mandela's face almost everywhere he looks. Truly, the man is omnipresent.
Seasonal change in Los Angeles is often a very subtle thing. It's not as if we finally stop having to shovel the snow out of our driveways and can put our parkas back in the closet.
Football is at least as 'gay' as rugby, Greco-Roman wrestling and the film '300.'
I'm not into fame. I'm not into making money, outside of financing my books. I'm not into status. My thing is basically about time - not wasting it.
If a slave were to raise his voice to his master, he risked all manner of punishment. Yet what was possible in many circumstances was to lift one's voice in song. This was a major ingredient in what is now known as blues and gospel. Slaves may have been regarded as subhuman by their cruel captors, but through music, they were proud and dignified.
I've never heard Daft Punk; I've never heard a track of theirs in my life. They're the two guys with motorcycle helmets on?
Airports in major cities, like LAX, are trippy environments. It is at once a national and international gathering of those in transition: The euphoric, emerging from planes, their journey at an end, and the determined, about to depart.
While I have no empirical evidence to back this up, I bet that the number of homosexual people per thousand has not fluctuated all that much over the centuries. I do not believe the dented wisdom my father used to extol, that homosexuality was a sure sign of a civilization in decline.
Lou Reed's music has been in the lives of millions of people all over the world for decades. He had a truly universal presence and was respected by musicians across all genres.
I wonder if it is Australia's great distance from more populated land masses that allows its inhabitants to be left to their own devices, to be incredibly creative and, at times, to be wonderfully weird.
Each year, every city in the world that can should have a multiday festival. More people meeting each other, digging new types of music, new foods, new ideas. You want to stop having so many wars? This could be a step in the right direction.
At times, I feel America is something that I can actually put my arms around, more than a land mass and a Constitution, something far more containable and understandable. I don't exactly know what it is, but at these times I feel completely woven into it.
I am neither pro- nor anti-gun. I am gun-conscious.
We spend millions of dollars to remove pain from our lives. It's why so many people get hooked on painkillers. The body becomes addicted to painlessness. That tells you a lot.
If I'm in L.A. for longer than 20 days, I'm looking for work, because I don't do vacations.
I read a bit of Ray Bradbury when I was a younger man. I don't read a lot of fiction anymore... like, none.
I have to do things for myself, and if those standards are set high, then it's up to me to pass or fail.
America is a country born from semi-mythologized blood, glory and acts of selfless patriotic sacrifice.
I don't mind bees and think we are all the better for having them around. I like the taste of honey.
You could split hairs and bring up words like 'doo-wop' and terms like 'soul' or 'R&B', but I think pop music is what you want it to be - that's why it's pop.
