I think you might be considered a terrorist for asking the question! It can be so broadly defined now. And the thing is, you’re not privy to those decisions. Anyone who expresses any opinion can be considered a terrorist.
What is poverty, if not violence. Like, the number of people who die every year from starvation and from hunger and poverty is in the tens of millions.
Being a musician is a given for me-I didn't have much choice in the matter.
I didn't abandon my studies. Because I was, through no - clarify this. Through no particular genius of my own, I was the first person from Libertyville Public High School to attend Harvard, not because I was smarter than anyone or better than anyone, but no one had ever applied before. It was like University of Illinois, a fine institution, was the sort of the upper echelon of places where kids went from that school. And so I felt sort of a duty to myself and my peers to continue with those studies, and to continue to, intellectually arm myself for my coming struggles.
I was a fan of heavy music - first metal, then punk, then hip hop.
I came late to the genre of folk music.
My parents met in Kenya. My father is African, is Kenyan. The Kenyan side of my family was involved in the anticolonial movement.
I think that new artistic challenges help you grow both as a person, as an artist, and then they feed back into your other work, and tend to magnify it.
In a world of bands called Limp Bizkit and Hoobastank, Electric Sheep rolls off the tongue like a Shakespearean love sonnet. Leave me alone.
You can kiss my Kiss-loving ass because Kiss was never a critic's band. It was a people's band.
Of course, music is an art form, and it's not all that competitive. But we don't ever intend to be the second-best band on a stage at any show.
I myself am a very, very peaceful person. Throughout our history, from our own American revolution to the resistance against apartheid in South Africa, to labor strikes in the US, people have resorted to violence to achieve a more progressive society, from time to time.
I didn't grow up with my Kenyan family. I grew up in a small, conservative suburb of Chicago.
I didn't choose to be a guitar player. That was something that felt like it was chosen for me. And with that blessing and curse, I, throughout my entire career, it's been my job to weave my convictions into my vocation. And whether I'm standing in the streets of Chicago or the Occupy Wall Street or in Madison, Wisconsin, my job is to steel the backbone of people on the frontlines of social justice struggles, and to put wind in sails of those struggles. And people who are fighting on a, on a daily basis, at a grass roots level, for the things that I believe in.
Tonight, it's the rock and roll all night and party every day hall of fame.
Bashing the elite is what I'm all about in my music because they absolutely don't deserve the privileged position that they're in, and we're seeing this around the globe right now.
Then about 12 years ago it dawned on me that folk music - the music of Woody Guthrie and Phil Ochs, early Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Pete Seeger - could be as heavy as anything that comes through a Marshall stack. The combination of three chords and the right lyrical couplet can be as heavy as anything in the Metallica catalogue.
I literally integrated the small town of Libertyville, Illinois. I was the first person of color to reside within its borders.
I feel fortunate to have made records during an era where people actually bought music. But I have friends in struggling up-and-coming bands now that will certainly never be able to pay the rent, because music has been devalued.
I'd say that one area where my political views have remained unchanged is that, I am opposed to the government spying on everybody.
For the millennium [New Year's Eve], you really have a choice to make. You either have to be naked with your head on fire and a shotgun in Bali or else you have to spend time with friends or family around the fireplace. And I'm choosing option B
When real substantive change happens it's the people who watch your show, they're the ones that make it happen. It's people whose names are not highlighted in history books. They're the ones that stand up in their place and time to make change.
Well, I don't care for Paul Ryan's sound or his lyrics. He can like whatever bands he wants, but his guiding vision of shifting revenue more radically to the one percent is antithetical to the message of Rage.
