Can't do any work with a rock star; you have to go through their lawyers and their agents and their managers and you have to book them hotel rooms. When you work with your friends, you just call them up and they come over and you record and then you go out to see a movie.
The solution probably doesn't look like the problem. If we have this propensity to worry, to be anxious, to be depressed, to be angry - focusing on the worry, anxiety, depression, and anger? Probably not gonna be the solution.
I truly don't judge other people's actions. But I think that factory farming is an abomination.
Musicians, actors, writers - we're all neurotic, odd people who've lucked into accidental careers. So I just don't like being around public figures with that sense of entitlement, it just seems unhealthy, and it strips so much potential for them to develop as a human being.
In 1992 I was doing one of my first ever tours and I was in Heathrow airport and I saw these middle-aged musicians who had clearly been on tour for decades, and they all looked haggard and unhappy and unhealthy. I vowed to myself that I would never be that person. Flash forward 20 years and I found myself in Heathrow looking haggard and unhappy and unhealthy. I decided I would rather spend my time staying home working on music and making dinner with friends, instead of spending six months in a hotel in a state of depressing suspended adolescence.
The most emotional part is when I go into my studio every day and pretty much never have an idea of what's gonna happen.
When someone comes to me and says the music I've made has affected them emotionally, that's the most gratifying part of my job.
I love lots of different types of music, but it's music that has this up-swelling of beauty and emotion that is most important to me.
I feel like the vast majority of the world's problems would disappear if suddenly everyone on the planet were relatively self-aware and capable of honest self-love and compassion.
One of the problems with being relatively conscious and human, is that you want to help everybody.
Unfortunately I'm still straight. But who knows, life is complicated and maybe I'll wake up gay tomorrow! Here's hoping. And congratulations to everyone who lives in a place where they can marry the person they love, regardless of gender!
I'm not trying to look for pity or sympathy. I was just surprised that so many people in the world of entertainment seemed to be okay with misogyny and homophobia as long as they were profiting from it.
My main interest is just to work with people who have beautiful, interesting, emotive voices; I'm not too concerned whether someone is famous.
I have nothing against bombastic music, but when it comes to making albums, I'd prefer to make music that has a sort of vulnerable subtlety to it.
An artist in 2014 who is thinking about album sales is either sadly deluded or has to make so many commercial compromises that it sort of takes the joy out of making music.
Everyone feels awkward, everyone feels uncomfortable, everyone gets older, everyone gets lonely, everyone gets sick, everyone eventually dies. You’re at the Aspen Ideas Fest, and you have these really smart, really accomplished people who pretend like they’ve somehow figured out a way to bypass the human condition. We live in this culture where there are so many things that want us to pretend that we’re not truly human.
One of the goals of a spiritual practice is self-awareness, and one of the best tools of self-awareness is simple emotional vulnerability.
By being vulnerable, either with yourself or in the presence of another person, that’s where all growth and ultimate well-being comes from.
I've been friends with madonna for ever. In fact she was at my 3rd solo performance in 1990, and there were only 10 people in the audience.
I've been making music for thirty-six years and, you know, I'm still just as in love with working on music now as I was thirty-six years ago.
What makes me vulnerable is any genuine expression of emotion in the presence of another person. It makes me vulnerable and my inclination is, of course, immediately to back away from anything that makes me vulnerable.
What I love about making albums in the 21st century is that so few people buy albums! I can make an album without any commercial concerns whatsoever.
Because I've been that drunk person in the club so many thousands of times, when I'm in an environment where people are drunk or on drugs, I certainly don't judge them. Because it's almost a given that for much of my life I've been way more messed up than them.
At 3 o'clock in the morning on tour when you're sober is a lot less fun than 3 a.m. when you're drunk in a bar or in a nightclub. But having said that, 9 in the morning on tour sober is immeasurably better than 9 a.m. on tour when you're hung over and feeling like death.
I always just made music that resonates with me emotionally.
