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Live interaction with a crowd is a cathartic, spiritual kind of exchange, and it's intensified at a festival.
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I thought I'd reached the bottom a few times, but then I'd realise there was another 30 floors of despair below that.
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My life has two modes. One is sitting around writing and contemplating or building things. The other is execution mode. It takes a while to switch from one to the other.
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People want to listen to a lot of music and do whatever they want with it. They don't want DRM, they don't want subscriptions. They don't want a player that only can do this but can't do that and you only have one copy. They don't want that. You know? I don't want that.
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If I go onstage, I want to give people everything they want and more. I'll wash their car for them on their way out.
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I can still make a living with touring. And maybe you buy a t-shirt. And I would rather 10 million people get my record and listen to it for free than 500,000 that I coerced to pay $15 for it, you know?
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With a Nine Inch Nails show, I'm building on a legacy that comes with a certain set of expectations. I have to push that forward, I have to reinvent myself, I have to feel current and valid.
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I've become impossible, holding on to when everything seemed to matter more.
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Lots of people can have girlfriends. But I can throw around guitars onstage! That'll be my epitaph: 'He never had a girlfriend, but you should've seen him smash a Les Paul!'
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I think early on in my career, I was heavily inspired by bands like Throbbing Gristle and Test Dept, and films of David Lynch, for example, where the soundscape plays a very important role in the listening experience.
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Bow down before the one you serve, you're going to get what you deserve.
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To me, rock music was never meant to be safe. I think there needs to be an element of intrigue, mystery, subversiveness. Your parents should hate it.
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I often find myself listening to a record because a lot of people or magazines have told me it's good and I'm supposed to like it, and I try to stay in touch with what's happening and I'm also a fan of music. I find myself trying to like something that I really don't think is that great.
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I have been wildly enthused about gaming since I was younger, and a career path I chose not to go down but did really consider was getting into programming and game design.
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Why don't the Grammys matter? Because it feels rigged and cheap - like a popularity contest that the insiders club has decided.
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I need boundaries. In the modern studio there are a bunch of instruments around me, and I can simulate anything I can't play, so sometimes the palette feels too big.
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iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me. I don't feel cool when I go there. I'm tired of seeing John Mayer's face pop up.
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I've learned to recognize, a lot of it forced through the process of recovery, that I'm wired wrong in certain ways; the chemical balance of my brain is off in terms of depression a little bit.
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I was excited by the process of Pandora, which I still think is a decent product. Not as great in actuality as it sounds. After the first hour, its weaknesses start to show up.
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Making noise is easy; making stuff people understand is an easy thing to do.
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My brother, who's ten years younger than me, worked with me in the studio when he was very young. He's a guitar player and does programming as well. To have the working and personal relationship coincide has been very natural.
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MTV can't do less for me, let's put it that way. I'm fine without them.
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God is dead, and no one cares! If there is a hell I'll see you there!
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Spotify - I met those guys before they launched in America and was wildly excited about the idea. 'Wow, this is all the music in the world, for a flat fee.'