People screw me over with words, so I screw them over with songs.
This is my dream and I'm living it. I've never wanted to do anything else except write songs and perform them
I don't really think about having had a hard life. It was just my life, and it's all I knew. It made me who I am - all the good and bad - and it's where all of the songs on Here For The Party came from. I've lived them all.
Any musician with a slight level of self-awareness can be taught to write a 'good' song. A great song is completely original. It feels as if the performer is the only person who could bring it to life.
A good song is like a mannequin - its form makes sense, but there's no life. There should be memorable melody, thoughtful lyric, appropriate arrangement.
From a literary standpoint, I've been loving Raymond Carver's short stories, William Carlos Williams' poems, Richard Siken's 'Crush', John Fante, and Jim Harrison's book of ghazals. I love film and photography too, so many of my songs are very image rich from those influences.
I wrote a song at age five about algae on the pond by our house, then the next 'real' song was in fifth grade about an unrequited crush.
I had tremendous fun fooling around with the way people talked about songs, just the way that became another way of understanding the world.
Honestly, when I got to Hollywood I was trying to sell my songs.
None of us lie or guard our secrets when we sing, and India is a nation of singers whose first love is the kind of song we turn to when crying just isn't enough.
You couldnt get a job playing in a club unless you played so much Top 40 and so many Beatles songs. I just went into a sort of revolt.
That's one of the things that always grabbed me about rock music: There's a song, and you know how it goes, and you can sort of predict it, but a lot is left up to chance and interaction.
When it's time to write a new song, anything that you thought you understood last time is pretty much pulverized.
It's weird to me to even say, "I wrote this song." I never feel like I wrote it; I feel like I heard it.
What's great about going on tour is that it immediately unburdens me of those self-centered misconceptions. Because suddenly, with these songs you've been obsessed with for months, you're playing them for hundreds of people.
Brian Eno records and music became a huge obsession of mine in college, in a way that a pop song can provide solace. I don't know if it's shallow or silly, but it meant so much to me.
Once you really get into a song, other than just listening to it, it forces you to go 'oh, they did this. I never would have thought of doing that,' when you deconstruct it. It's something you really can't do sometimes when you're just listening to a song. You have to really get into it.
I've always loved doing covers. Some artists don't like covers. Some listeners don't like covers. But I love them. It gives you a new perspective production-wise. It's easier for me, if I'm starting a new record, I like to produce a few songs that aren't mine just so it frees me up not to worry about it so much.
I couldn't say there is a formula to songwriting. Each time is a unique experience.
Again there are so many records which contain fond memories and music and songs of which I have to say I am quite proud. There are a couple of tracks which in retrospect on which I now wish I had pushed the red button, however I'm sure this is true of any artist career that has spanned the number of years that mine has. I do not believe however that I have ever made a bad record and I have certainly never made a record to which I didn't give my complete commitment.
Songwriting is never one thing. I've spent as long as three months writing a song. Other times I've done it in twenty minutes.
The vocal arrangements are a big part of the formula for a Bad Religion song - layered harmonies and background vocals. So when I start to describe the elements of Bad Religion's sound, it starts to sound like a Christmas choir.
I've written almost 200 songs with Bad Religion. No matter where you look in our history, the focus has been trying to instill some of these disturbing realities about the world, some of the implications of evolution into an artistic format that can be interpreted by people who may never study evolution.
....the songs are universal enough that in ten years time they should still hold up quite well.
I didn't have a lot of overtly political songs. I think it was more the actions of the group that were threatening to the authorities, and also our political philosophies apart from the music.
