I always write the first and last song of an album first, and then the middle just kind of happens.
But I'm always trying to plan ahead too and in doing so, and in working on this album, I've met a lot people that I hope to be involved with, on their records and in their situations.
The great music for so many artists - the Beatles, the Rolling Stones - was always at the moment when they were closest to pop. It would be easy for U2 to go off and have a concept album, but I want us to stay in the pop fray.
So many people release albums before Christmas and they get lost in the Christmas rush.
Every time I release an album my old record company releases another one.
I'd done three solo albums in a row, and that's quite narcissistic.
You're always frustrated, you don't have the chance to do a song on the album, like the Beatles did with Ringo and George, or like Led Zeppelin, where everybody was given a chance to contribute. There never is a chance with the Stones.
I'm narrating the television series Biography. I'm still involved in my music - I have a new album out. I have an animated project in development. I'm writing a lot of things and you never know if one of them is going to become a six or seven year project.
I never liked making albums.
I remember a couple of instrumental albums, just don't ask the names.
My message behind this album was finding the beauty in imperfection.
I tried acting and all of the arts, I even put out a record album, but what I like the most is business.
For a Jewish guy, I've recorded a lot of Christmas albums.
I wouldn't buy somebody's album on a dare if they called him a musician's musician. I don't write to be a writer's writer. I don't want to be like the little-magazine writer.
Using what you have always enhances what's to come no matter if it's an album, song, artwork or whatever.
I would make far more money if every song were my own, but I don't write to fill up the album with my songs.
You can't get the visual thing on the record as much as you'd like to. We produced this album, and we'd never done that before, except when we produced singles for ourselves.
I've always wanted to make a bluegrass album.
I think every album you have, especially if it's done well, you feel like you're competing with yourself.
People say releasing an album is like giving birth, but it’s more like having a gallbladder operation.
Everyone's just extracting meaning and feeling and emotion from almost every aspect of music, and I think that for me, it's a huge antidote to that to have a concept album.
It's a spirit that was given me and the relationships and meeting all these great people, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong; through Max I met a lot of people too. My first album was with Benny Carter.
When I started out in this business, I was a performer before I was a songwriter, I was a performer before I was recording. Performing is the roots. That's where it all came from. You didn't start out doing it because you wanted to make an album.
By the time I did that third solo album, I'd finally learned how to do it, but I'd also learned that I liked being in a band
I'm Here All Weak might be the strangest comedy album I have ever heard. But I've listened twice, which is more than I listen to 90 percent of all comedy albums, so I think I love it?
