Johnny Flynn Quotes
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I definitely asked too many questions of my teachers and was probably a bit facetious at times.
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My dad was working class.
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In my mind, there's usually a fairly definitive kind of narrative when I write. But I don't want to enforce that on other people. I think that's why I like using metaphor so much.
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It's great being an actor and being part of a play or a film where there's usually quite a big group of people who are collaborating, and your job is really to fit in and share that energy. With music, because I write the songs, it's a broader, more abstract process.
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It's interesting to marry American musical traditions with the subtlety of English-style storytelling and folk singer-songwriters like Martin Carthy and Bert Jansch - they're two heritages that are distinct but also cross over on so many levels.
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I'm often the one in my gang of friends who's worried about how we're going to get from A to B. I'm the one running around saying, 'Is somebody going to do something about it?' Everyone else is bit more chilled.
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I'm obsessed with pilgrimages. I love following old routes, imagining the consciousness of those who walked them.
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All the adults in my family were actors, so there wasn't much else in terms of role models. I fell in love with that world, being backstage at the theatre.
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Bob Dylan has and Einstein had their own way of perceiving the universe and translating it for us.
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We had no money, my dad was out of work a lot, and we never owned a house. It was very hand-to-mouth.
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A lot of the work I've done has involved playing quite sympathetic characters.
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I like the idea of letting the music do its own work and the stories being more expressionful - if that's a word - in people's imagination. I've just got a thing about people and songs telling you how you should feel.
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Folk music - and what people are now perceiving as being folk music - is music that's quite close to the ground. The songs sound quite old, even if they're new. They sound like they've been sung by different people for years.
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I did a lot of theater as a young actor in my early twenties, and my first few records really came from writing songs through the rehearsal processes.
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Our job as actors is to invent the things that bridge ourselves with the characters, so you have to build something if it's not there - you try and learn what makes people behave in a certain way.
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It's not in the mainstream media, but across towns, it is amazing how there are small groups of people getting together and forming artistic collectives - they may not be being overtly political, but I'd say by channelling their energy into community projects, that's a valid political statement.
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I imagine that, for most people, acting isn't something they think is a viable option, whereas for me, it was the most viable option. No adults around me knew how to do anything else.
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I had to learn how to work in a studio at first because it's a totally different creative environment to the 'bedroom recordings' I'd done before, where I could translate my own ideas without having to explain them to anyone.
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I'm not that politically educated.
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Loads of verses don't make it into the finished song.
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My guitar is a 1934 National Trojan. They call it a resonator, which is the guitar guys played in the honky-tonks before amplification. It's very loud. It's the type of guitar that Son House and Robert Johnson played.
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I guess I started writing poetry and stuff and then decided to set it to music.
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I like really bad puns - proper, red-top, nasty puns - I find them funny.
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I find it hugely exciting to be dealing with another writer's language.