I like noise. It's always puzzled me why one of the goals of contemporary recording is to get rid of noise and to eliminate any element of a performance.
My job of being a musician in a recording studio has nothing to do with being a musician being on tour performing.
I love the fact that no one's ever bought my record because they were enamoured of the way I look. Maybe one person. There must be someone out there with compromised taste.
I'd much rather go to a Banksy art show than a Moby art show. My art is painfully naive.
I believe that the role of limited government should be looking after the needs of veterans, the elderly, children and those institutions that improve the quality of life for struggling families - I don't believe that government should bend to serve the needs of subsidized multi-national corporations and entitled billionaires.
Shaving your head is acceptable. It's when you start wearing toupees and brushing your hair over that things go wrong.
I feel compelled to make art that on one hand reflects and sometimes almost creates like a sense of comfort when confronted with the strangeness of the world.
I walk out my front door in New York and I'm out on the street and there are people everywhere. L.A. is so much more spread out, so it's really easy in L.A. to have a little more isolation and to just not see as many people.
I thought that my life would be spent working in a bookstore, teaching community college, and making music in my spare time that no one would be willing to listen to.
I made a record in 1996 called 'Animal Rights' that was a very difficult, very dark punk-rock record. Of all the records I've made, it's my favorite one. It's also the one that got the worst reviews and sold the worst.
I love to be busy. I'm envious of people who are able to take their spare time and relax. All I like to do is work. Perhaps it's lingering Calvinist guilt?
I'll look through 'Us Weekly' and I'll see a picture of Brad Pitt and Jennifer Anniston. And I'm like, 'Wow, they just... they look so good. Even if they're like just wearing jeans and a t-shirt, they still look great.'
I've worked with all sorts of random people - everybody from Metallica to Britney Spears to Ozzy Osbourne to Michael Jackson to the Beastie Boys. I've got a really strange CV. It's interesting - I work with a lot of these disparate, different people to learn what it's like to work with random people.
I truly believe, as an institution, most major labels should just die.
Growing up in Connecticut, all the Colonial houses looked alike. In Los Angeles, the diversity is so extreme, it's baffling.
Whenever I've had success, I never learn from it. Success usually breeds a degree of hubris. When you fail, that's when you learn.
Whereas for me, touring tends to be a very strange and isolating experience.
Who wakes up when they're worth £120million and says, 'I'm unhappy today but if only I had an extra £2million!'
If you make a record, you should ask yourself, 'Did it make someone cry, in a good way, not a bad way?' There should almost be subjective emotional criteria for evaluating work, instead of just profitability.
I think the word 'blog' is an ugly word. I just don't know why people can't use the word 'journal.'
When I was in my twenties, I thought I was bulletproof.
But at the same time, I don't let myself regret things to the point that I'm paralyzed.
I don't think there's anything wrong with not knowing how to play an instrument, but the rise of the non-musical producer has done away with musicianship and focused attention purely on the song's hook.
If one of my heroes comes to me and says, 'Do you want to work on something?' I just say, 'Yes.' I don't ask for details; I don't expect to get paid anything. I just love working with my heroes.
Punishing people for listening to music is exactly the wrong way to protect the music business.
