Loudon Wainwright III Quotes
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I had a hip replacement a couple of years ago. I have a song about that. And why wouldn't you? It strikes me that that was a huge event. It's kind of funny and horrible and interesting, so why wouldn't one write about that?
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I know that people don't listen to music much in the way when they'll put on a CD, sit down, have a drink or go on a car journey. People pick and choose and just listen to tracks. But when I make a record, I try to think about it as a 50 minute musical journey, so the mood is very important, as is the sequence of the songs.
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When you start performing, you realize that you have to separate yourself from the pack. So I would never wear bell-bottoms, which everybody else was wearing. I had short hair - and to see a 21-year-old guy walk onstage without longish hair was, in itself, weird. Every entertainer needs a shtick.
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I have travelled and been pretty much a one man operation for most of my career, and I think it'll continue to be that way.
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I think I'm great. I mean, I might as well come out and say it. Like most people, I have an ego and I'm in show business, so you have to have kind of a healthy, conflagrated ego to a degree. On the other hand, I'm consumed, like a lot of people, with self-doubt and loathing and guilt.
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As it turns out, three of my four kids are professional singers. And they're really interesting, good singers.
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You just do the best you can. It doesn't necessarily mean that you have to get worse the more you do it. It can get better, I think... aspects of it, anyway. I mean, I don't write as much as I used to. But I don't do a lot of things as much as I used to. So that's the natural order of things, too. You're more or less living in the present. You're just trying to get that next song, whatever it is. And not think too much about what happened on the last record, or the record you made 20 years ago, because those are over with. Those are done.
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I've never really suffered complete and utter writer's block, really. I equate it with sex: in the beginning of my career, I was writing five songs a week; now, I occasionally write a song. But it's an exciting moment when it happens!
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I studied acting and there's certainly an element of performance. I think that the songs are in many ways written to be performed. I think about what it's going to be like to sing them on stage rather than what it's going to be like to have someone at home listening to them on a CD. I guess in that way there's a connection between my acting experience and the songwriting and the way the songs are written.
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If I had five minutes to live, I don't think I'd be bothered singing a song. I'd be dead, so it won't really matter. I'd have a glass of wine and a cigarette.
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Right away, I knew I didn't want to have that look of other guys with long hair and bell-bottom pants, because everybody else had that look. I kind of adopted my boarding-school look, which made me stand out. Then the next thing you know, the first song on my first record is a song called "School Days." It's about going to the boarding school I went to. So then I just started to write about myself. The very first song I ever wrote was about a guy I met in a boatyard that we were working in. So I've always had this thing about sticking to more or less what I knew.
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Displaying a bland, even an eerie, disregard for what appeared to be the facts of the situation, he fell back on an old habit of looking ahead to the next defeat.
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I think I'm the oldest new Bob Dylan around. I predate Bruce Springsteen, Steve Forbat and John Prine. I was probably the first of the new Bob Dylans.
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And it's the same when there's a war on: it's the men who go to fightWomen and children are civilians, when they're killed it's not rightMen kill men in uniform, its the way war goesWhen they run they're cowards, when they stay they are heroes.
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I guess I can be surprised I'm alive. I'm taking a little better care of myself than when I was a young person. My father died when he was 63. My mother made it to 74. My grandparents, God, they were dropping like flies.
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Why kill good people just to get a bad man?
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It's nice when people say, 'God, I've been listening to you since 1963 or 1985, or whatever.' I appreciate anybody who goes out and buys music these days.
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If you're 28 and singing about being over the hill, you're pretending. When you're 67 and singing about it, you know what you're talking about.
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I'm writing about what's happening to me now. I mean, I had a hip replacement a couple of years ago. I have a song about that. And why wouldn't you? It strikes me that that was a huge event. It's kind of funny and horrible and interesting, so why wouldn't one write about that?
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When my mother died, and when my father died, it's big. Our parents are giants; they're titans of our lives, so of course it's going to be a big deal.
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I always wanted to be an actor, even as a little kid. So I went to drama school in the late '60s at Carnegie Mellon.
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In a way, the songs are written to be performed. I put them on records, but I'm always thinking about how an audience would react to it. I realized at age 7 that I wanted to be a performer, and I used to do that, and occasionally I'll get an acting job. I don't really make much of a living as an actor, but it's fun to do it when I get a job.
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I wasn't in a lot of rock and roll bands. I was in jug bands and things when I was in school.
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My music comes from country music. Merle Haggard is God, and I do believe that. I'm not too tuned in to country music. I don't know who Brooks and Dunn are. I like Shania Twain, though!