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I think when you've been in a band for a really long time, sometimes you don't appreciate what's good about yourself. It's easy to play something and get too focused on some small detail. It's helpful to have somebody around who can say, "No, that was good." Just so you don't get too lost or forget what you do. You need somebody you really trust who has great taste.
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I think of hip hop as a mass media, radio, MTV thing. It’s been extremely relevant over the last 10 years and rock music is just not anymore—-a tear rolls down my cheek as I say that.
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I always find live shows on film kind of boring. Even my favorite ones, I kinda zone out for most of it. It's just so different seeing a band in the flesh and then watching a film of it, even if you have a hundred cameras and it's shot from every angle. There's just a communal, visceral thing that never translates very well.
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Actual patriotism has to do with loving a place enough to try and improve it.
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When I was younger, bands helped me connect to part of my humanity; bands that had nothing to do with anything political helped to form me. There's a correlation in that: If people can connect to music, maybe they can connect to each other.
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I think there's some pretty amazing language in the Bible. The thing that's always been interesting to me about religion is that compared to the more modern spirituality, the West Coast pseudo-Buddhist thing that people go for these days, actual Buddhism and Islam have been looking at these philosophical questions, at really hard questions, for a long time. There's a lot of stuff that philosophy doesn't talk about, and in the secular world, a lot of times, people don't talk about these ideas, and that was always really interesting for me.
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In the UK, tons of records are now sold in grocery stores, because there are no record stores - it's iTunes or the grocery store. And almost every band that had an impact on me was on a major label. There's value in people actually hearing things, as well.
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Whenever you do anything or say anything, you're opening yourself up to criticism. But that's okay.
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Work really hard, find joy in working really hard, and don’t focus on the outcome of your hard work.
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I think music is best left for the listener to experience for themselves. My own description of it is only based on my own history, my own musical references and perspective. I like to avoid coloring things for people too much.
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So many things inspire me to write, that’s really hard to put into words. Usually some form of chaos or discomfort propels me into a writing mode.