John Wesley Harding Quotes

When I was writing this new bunch of songs, I was singing a lot lower, because they were more intimate in a way. I had to come up with a way to frame the music that was intimate.

Aloha Earth, this is Elvis calling. You'll find me in the big house now.

A friend of mine pointed out to me, "Why do you separate your writing and your music?" I got (writers) Rick Moody and Jonathan Ames to do the first one, and it just kind of gathered steam; then NPR picked it up. It is a nice way for me to marry both sides of my career, a move that's probably culminated in me dropping the name John Wesley Harding.

I just love putting on a show. I get a tremendous sense of community out of it.

Novels may have taken care of the emotional business for me, which has allowed music to be more emotional for me.

The reason I did the name change is simple. I wrote a bunch of autobiographical material and I was really enjoying myself doing it, and in two of the songs I quote two different people (referring to me as Mr. Stace). And it just hit me at some point that it was ludicrous for me to think of myself as Wesley Stace, publish novels as Wesley Stace, be Wesley Stace and not have it released as Wesley Stace.

The people you might lose are the people who look at a marquee and are like, "Oh, John Wesley Harding is playing. I went to see him play 20 years ago." But if they see Wesley Stace, they might make absolutely no link between those two things at all.

I do find that most fans are aware of my writing career and have known my real name for many years.

With me more than anybody it seems silly having a stage name, and there wasn't any particular difference between me and John Wesley Harding. There wasn't any need to draw that line. I just happened to draw it.

If they'd said, "Do you want to be John Wesley Harding or Wesley Stace in 25 years' time?" I would have said Wesley Stace, but I wasn't to know.

If somebody had said to me back in 1988 that I'd still be making music in 25 years' time, to start with I would have keeled over with shock because I wouldn't have believed them.

I took the name originally as a kind of disguise because I didn't want people to know I was about to embark on a s****y musical career that would last five months. And a lot of people took funny names back then.

There's nothing I like more than a writer who can sing, or a musician who has a book out.

The only problem with conjuring people is they insist on getting paid, unlike a writer who would do a reading for nothing.