Bradford Cox Quotes
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I want to satisfy the listener, exactly. I want to entertain the audience. I want the people to leave the show with the feeling I used to leave shows with when I was young, and I couldn't get over it for another three or four days after it. I just kept reliving the set in my mind.
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I was only in the public eye because I was annoying. You know how neurotic people may ask for one thing when they may really want another thing? It was like I was asking for attention, but I didn't really want attention.
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All music is devotional, whether it's devotion to products, face washes, creams, plastic. Everybody is devoted to something.
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You read about that Black Lips/Wavves fight as a spectator and you're like, "Oh man, I'm gonna pick a team to be on! I'm gonna put my two cents in as my status update on my Facebook page" or something. Not to sound like an anti-technology person, but it's just a real drag that people live their lives that way.
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I used to be a lot more engaged on an improvisational level than other people. I was always on tour and always had a guitar in my hands, and when I went back home, my battery was at full charge. I had a lot of energy to get off, just impulses that I could draw upon.
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When young groups put out albums, they're always forced to go through this cycle of touring and talking and flaunting and posturing and peacocking. Nobody makes me do that anymore.
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Everybody just needs to realize that when you write something you're just in one mood. I was told I needed to write it and it was overdue; I don't even remember what day it was.
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The first thing I think I ever played in public, aside from singing in church, would have been - and this is a true story - when I was about nine or 10 years old, I was obsessed with Twin Peaks. I played the theme from Twin Peaks on a little tiny Casio keyboard. People politely applauded. I just fell in love with that song and thought it was very heartbreaking.
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When money and fame happen too late, it's like pouring kerosene over a fire of self-loathing.
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I think the younger kids need to realize there's this whole forgotten 90s that people don't really talk about.
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I want the music to be heard as close to when I made it, as much as possible. I don't want to get into some "future of the music industry" thing, or where I stand on digital this or that, but I think it's ridiculous that a lot of people in the industry plan so far ahead that it makes a lot of improvisation impossible and makes a lot of people's expectations fixed and not fluid.
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I refuse to put myself into a situation in which I have to face some kind of "I'm losing it" kind of thing. I'm not "losing it"; it's changed. What it is is changing.
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I'm a really friendly guy, I guess, and I really like meeting people.
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In reality, I've probably got the lowest self-esteem of anybody I know, which has really been rubbed in my face lately in personal situations.
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You gotta have friends, and it's really hard to have friends that don't operate on the same schedule as you or do the same kind of things you do, because they don't understand it. And then you realize that your friends - your real-life friends - it's not that they become fanboys of you but they become more interested in what you're doing than how you're doing.
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I don't like the sound of my own voice. And, for people I don't know, their impression of me is what they read on the internet, and they're so far off a lot of the time.
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I need punk rock. It's the medicine for me, but it's bitter and sickening. If you don't need it - if you're happy and healthy - run toward that.
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As a homosexual, my job is simply to sodomize mediocrity.
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I've been used for writing rhythm guitar chords for a long time because it's so easy to play and chords just sound good on it.
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You think about people like Elvis, Kurt Cobain, or the Beatles, who grew up without privilege and needed a certain validation through peoples' acceptance, or admiration from their peers. And money is part of that, but it always comes too late.
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Audiences tend to dig the earlier stuff by any given musician, and the artists themselves always tend to prefer the thing that they're doing now.
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I'll be honest with you, one of the things that frustrated me the most out the record leak thing, it had nothing to do with record sales - I mean, that's a joke. Has anybody looked at how many records anybody sells anymore? If you're not Jay-Z, a record leaking isn't going to affect you. It was just really personal.
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I'm more into Neil Young and radical honesty.
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I'm interested in acting as much as I'm interested in gardening. I want to garden, eventually. I want to learn how to do a lot of things. I've always wanted to learn how to paint, too. I'd like to try everything, but music is my reason for living.