Pretenders Quotes
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Everyone has their set of problems and I'm certainly not going to sensationalize mine or try to evoke pity or sympathy out of people because I don't think they warrant that sort of thing. That's my private karma that I have to work out.
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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 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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Don't get a job in an abattoir. Don't be a butcher. The idea that people have to do these jobs for a livelihood is ridiculous. They can get other jobs. Shoplift, man. Better to be a prostitute than cut an animal's head off for a living.
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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.
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I had learned classical guitar when I was a kid, and I embraced it, and apparently I got good at it.
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The cliché of that sort of wasted, renegade, drugged-out musician of the '70s is kind of dead and gone now. And I suppose that a lot of people still keep relying on that, or some kind of image to perpetuate something that they think they're supposed to sound like. But that kind of takes you away from real inspiration and, you know, real artistic discovery of the individual.
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I am very grateful to punk because I was a girl, and I felt like if I got in a band, I'd be kind of a novelty act, but punk was all about non-discrimination. No one cared because it was punk, so, you know, anyone could do anything they wanted.
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When I hear myself singing, I hear Iggy Pop and Jimi Hendrix. There's a conversational thing going on. I suppose it depends on which The Pretenders song you're listening to.
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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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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 not going to judge what I do.
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All I can really remember doing was listening to the radio and listening to records when I was at school. I wasn't very academic, and I certainly wasn't a very good student.
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I remember, my mom, she's lived in Spain for about thirty years, and we were playing the Royal Albert Hall, and she was with some friends from New York. Morrissey came out with the sign 'The Queen is Dead,' and my mom's friends are like, 'Oh my God.' They took it literally.
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Don't get me wrong, I think "Portlandia" is really funny, and quite brilliant, but I like to be in a city where I can hang out in Powell's Bookstore most nights and go out with my friends in a liberal, relaxed atmosphere. I wish more cities were like that.
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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 just want to play guitar and be in a band. Same as I always did.
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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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If you're an artist, you need to work. It doesn't matter how old you are, who you are. It doesn't matter if you're 12: if you draw, you draw. If you're 85 and you paint, you paint.
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I never want to bore the public.
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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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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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I like Madonna a lot. I think she's really good and I think she's a good singer. I think she looks good and she's got a nice kind of... I don't think she's got a sinister or cynical vibe around her, and I don't think she's got any sort of bullshit around her.
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It's my tough luck if things happen that are complicated.