David Johansen Quotes
-
I've been around the block a couple of times, and the guy I am now is the guy I like to be.
-
I listen to a lot of different kinds of music.
-
In the late '70s, I had a band - the David Johansen band, for lack of a better name - and I started collecting, not records, but tapes from people I knew who had jump-blues records.
-
I still do a lot of shows with Brian Koonin, but we haven't had a full band lately.
-
I'm doing exactly what I want to do, and I'm having fun doing it.
-
My father was a Norwegian tenor and my mother a New York Irish librarian.
-
You know when you read that someone has to leave a show or a tour because they had 'nervous exhaustion'? Well, I had one of those and discovered that I was quite close to death. I always assumed that my lifestyle was going to take me at an early age, but when it was actually occurring I was, 'Not yet!' I pulled back.
-
I'm compelled to paint nearly every day. I just felt like making a painting, went out and bought paints and a canvas. Now it fulfills me creatively when I'm not doing music: it's something you can do by yourself and it's totally yours. It's a great adjunct to my life.
-
Everything I've done I've just fallen into.
-
The stuff that I dig, it's usually got a soulful component to it. A singer that I really like. I might not understand the language that they're singing in, but I'm really communing with this person.
-
I'm afraid of me.
-
Sometimes when I hear my voice on tape, I'm like, 'Who is that horrible man?'
-
It's really a drag to do the same project over and over again.
-
As I recall, my life as a child was so all-consuming that I barely had time to consider the future.
-
I don't really like to sit around the house listening to my own records. They're not that good.
-
I mean, if you asked me what I'm going to be doing when I'm 85, I'd make a quick picture in my mind and, well, I'll be singing.
-
When you're a kid, you have this feeling like you're indestructible. Your mortality doesn't even occur to you. But as time goes by, you realize, 'I better cut this out or that out if I want to continue to exist.'
-
We thought that's the way you were supposed to be if you were in a rock 'n' roll band. Flamboyant.
-
You know, when you're making a record, you come up with 15, 20 songs. Then they start to fall by the wayside as your interest wanes. It's kind of like a process of elimination to determine which songs wind up on the record.
-
Playing music is the best thing in the world. It makes show business almost bearable.
-
Most bands are commercial enterprises. But I'm not in one of those bands.
-
I'm not impersonating anybody. I'm perfectly satisfied with what I am.
-
When I was a kid, I had some Charles Lloyd records.
-
I don't know why I'm alive but I know there's a reason for it.