Pretenders Quotes
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I love America - I'm not saying that I love Americans. I don't know. It just seems a bit more optimistic. I don't know - in England, if you do something successful, people hate you. Whereas in America, if you do something successful, people will pat you on the back and say, 'Hey, well done.' People are jealous and negative in England.
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I'm 34 now, I like to say 35 because it makes me look better for my age, and I have to keep a little bit of a profile so that every three years if I do put a record out, I don't have to substantiate where I've been for three years and why the silence and the sort of false mysterioso.
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The meat industry spends hundreds of millions of dollars lying to the public about their product. But no amount of false propaganda can sanitize meat. The facts are absolutely clear: Eating meat is bad for human health, catastrophic for the environment, and a living nightmare for animals.
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I don't listen to music, and I don't particularly watch television, so if anyone wants to come over and just hang out with me sitting at the table in silence, you know, eating a dish of rice... I don't get too many takers.
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I am very proud of the fact that 20 years on people tell me they became a vegetarian as a result of 'Meat is Murder'. “I think that is quite literally rock music changing someone's life - it's certainly changing the life of animals. It is one of the things I am most proud of.
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Growing up in public is a test, and not many people know how to do it.
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Whatever I'm already doing becomes enhanced when I smoke pot. It can also be demotivating, because if I'm not doing anything and I smoke a joint, it enhances just sitting in a chair. Then I don't even want to get up to change a record. That might not be a bad thing, but you have to get things done once in a while.
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I'm not interested in trying to have people who might like other kinds of music follow me. I don't want to please them.
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I'm not going to judge what I do.
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Joining Modest Mouse was just consistent with what I used to do as a teenager: I followed where I thought I would make some interesting music.
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It was strange: I never had an interest in school because from an early age I knew the only thing I wanted to do was to play music! So I didn't feel so bad not going into school when I was supposed to be there - why do I need Latin, geography, physical education, etc., and to get beaten on a daily basis?
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For my 21st birthday, I think my mother wanted to give me a watch, or something, you know, some kind of traditional thing. And I said, "Well, if you're going to buy me something, there's a Gibson Melody Maker guitar advertised in the paper for 60 dollars. Do you think I could have that?" And I think that she was very disappointed that at 21 I was still messing around with that sort of thing. She didn't understand what it was all about. But now she understands it, and likes it.
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Occasionally, a great band would come along, like Blondie or OutKast who could be pop and bring interesting ideas into the mainstream at the same time. That's now gone, because of this weird mutation of pop, rap, R&B, bad rave, and supposedly soulful singing on top of it.
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What characterized the whole punk scene for me in 1977 was there was no racism or sexism. It was an anarchy of -isms, and a matter of abolishing it all.
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With Freebass, there were no rules, really. It was all rather chaotic. Obviously, Hooky was playing the high end stuff, which he always does; Mani was doing the bottom end, and I thought I'd go midway and meet everyone in the middle.
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I'm kind of a brown-rice hippy. I don't think I'd have much success if I tried a dinner party, but I'm not going to have one, and I've never been invited to one, and that's just fine.
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I find this kind of folk with guys in Wellington boots and washboards not good to listen to. That music is one step away from barn dancing as far as I'm concerned. Anyone under the age of 60 should not be wearing Wellington boots on stage.
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A ballad once in a while doesn't go amiss.
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If you don't have a flag sticking out of your ass, you must be a communist.
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Back in the days of the Smiths, when we first started touring England - this is, like, 1984 - there were these two girls. They were literally vicar's daughters, and they used to follow us to every gig, no matter where we went.
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You know, when you're 23 and you get pissed, I mean drunk, you can just go crazy and it's all right. But if you're 43 and you do it, it's like your best friend's mother who used to come in pissed and everybody was really embarrassed. It just doesn't go down well, you know, after a certain age.
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The people who are making a lot of money and eating at McDonald's and watching MTV and have square eyeballs, they're over there. And then maybe there's like five other people left in America and I'm just waiting for them to come up with something interesting.
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I'm with someone who's got very high standards, and he doesn't tolerate all these ridiculous vices very easily. That's not reason enough to marry someone, although people have gotten married for less.
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I've done lots of songs for film soundtracks and things like that-stuff I'm not ashamed of, but that doesn't represent my legacy with the Pretenders...I think domesticity certainly doesn't make it easy to write, you know, because you've got a lot of distractions and I think a writer is always looking for distractions.