The Americans at heart are a pure and noble people; things to them are in black and white. It's either 'rawk' or it's not. We Brits putter around in the grey area.
When it comes down to it, glam rock was all very amusing. At the time, it was funny, then a few years later it became sort of serious-looking and a bit foreboding.
All Montreal bands have around nine members, I believe.
I would dream. I focused all my attention on going to America. The subculture, James Dean, the rock n' roll, the beat writers.
I knew that I was 'interesting' at 18 because I was aware that I could get away with doing things on stage.
When I was 18, I thought that, to be a romantic, you couldn't live past 30.
I wanted to imbue Ziggy with real flesh and blood and muscle, and it was imperative that I find Ziggy and be him.
I think Mustique is Duchampian - it will always provide an endless source of delight.
I'm very good at what I do, and I don't turn my hand to something unless I'm very good at it, frankly.
I'm wallowing in the whole idea of just being a guy out there with a band, with songs. It's a real enjoyment.
Being shoved into the top-40 scene was an unusual experience. It was great I'd become accessible to a huge audience but not terribly fulfilling.
The truest form of any form of revolutionary Left, whatever you want to call it, was Jack Kerouac, E.E. Cummings, & Ginsberg's period. Excuse me, but that's where it was at.
I was born in London 1947, after the war. A real wartime baby. I went to school in Brixton, and then I moved up to Yorkshire, which is in the north of England. I lived on the farms up there.
I cannot with any real integrity perform songs I've done for 25 years. I don't need the money. What I need is to feel that I am not letting myself down as an artist and that I still have something to contribute.
I don't crave applause. I'm not one of those guys who comes alive on stage. I'm much more alive at home, I think.
From my standpoint, being an artist, I want to see what the new construction is between artist and audience.
I think, generally, I just cannot really envision life without writing and producing records and singing.
I've always tended to write songs prolifically.
I could imagine at a certain age, when I have no vocal cords left, that I would find a young man who could sing my parts for me. But I don't see why I would stop.
The name Zahra was to have been lman's own name at birth, but a senior member of the family changed it to lman at the last minute.
I don't like to read things that people write about me. I'd rather read what kids have to say about me because it's not their profession to do that.
Now I realize that from '72 through to about '76, I was the ultimate rock star. I couldn't have been more rock star.
Frankly, if I could get away with not having to perform, I'd be very happy. It's not my favorite thing to do.
I think much has been made of this alter ego business. I mean, I actually stopped creating characters in 1975 - for albums, anyway.
My father worked for a children's home called Dr. Barnardo's Homes. They're a charity.
With a suit, always wear big British shoes, the ones with large welts. There's nothing worse than dainty little Italian jobs at the end of the leg line.
I think in the '70s that there was a general feeling of chaos, a feeling that the idea of the '60s as 'ideal' was a misnomer. Nothing seemed ideal anymore. Everything seemed in-between.
There are times when I prefer a cerebral moment with an artist, and I'll just enjoy the wit of a Picabia or a Duchamp. It amuses me that they thought that what they did would be a good way of making art.
My mother was Catholic, my father was Protestant. There was always a debate going on at home - I think in those days we called them arguments - about who was right and who was wrong.
I have all the admiration in the world for somebody like Bono, who really puts himself on the line and tries actively to do something about our world situation.
Radio in England is nonexistent. It's very bad English use of a media system, typically English use.
I rate Morrissey as one of the best lyricists in Britain. For me, he's up there with Bryan Ferry.
When you think about it, Adolf Hitler was the first pop star.
When I heard Little Richard, I mean, it just set my world on fire.
Tony Visconti and I had been wanting to work together again for a few years now. Both of us had fairly large commitments and for a long time we couldn't see a space in which we could get anything together.
Nearly all the synth work on Heathen is mine and some of the piano.
I felt I really wanted to back off from music completely and just work within the visual arts in some way. I started painting quite passionately at that time.
But I've got to think of myself as the luckiest guy. Robert Johnson only had one album's worth of work as his legacy. That's all that life allowed him.
But I'm pretty good with collaborative thinking. I work well with other people.
Dance music is no longer a simple Donna Summer beat. It's become a whole language that I find fascinating and exciting. Eventually, it will lose the dance tag and join the fore of rock.
I'm not very articulate.
I never really felt like a rock singer or a rock star or whatever.
Once I've written something it does tend to run away from me. I don't seem to have any part of it - it's no longer my piece of writing.
The Internet carries the flag of being subversive and possibly rebellious and chaotic, nihilistic.
Fame can take interesting men and thrust mediocrity upon them.
Being a hybrid maker off and on over the years, I'm very comfortable with the idea and have been the subject of quite a few pretty good mash-ups myself.
There are half a dozen subjects that I return to time and time again, and that doesn't bother me. Because most of my favorite writers do that, to hunt down the same topic or theme from different directions each time.
I'm rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work, it's no longer his... I just see what people make of it.
I was never particularly fond of my voice.
It would be my guess that Madonna is not a very happy woman. From my own experience, having gone through persona changes like that, that kind of clawing need to be the center of attention is not a pleasant place to be.
However, there's no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums.
GYBE are among my, erm, two favourite Montreal bands, Arcade Fire being the other.
Pixies and Sonic Youth were so important to the eighties.
I had to resign myself, many years ago, that I'm not too articulate when it comes to explaining how I feel about things. But my music does it for me, it really does.
I don't profess to have music as my big wheel and there are a number of other things as important to me apart from music. Theatre and mime, for instance.
Songs don't have to be about going out on Saturday night and having a good rink-up and driving home and crashing cars. A lot of what I've done is about alienation... about where you fit in society.
The skin of my character in 'The Man Who Fell to Earth' was some concoction, a spermatozoon of an alien nature that was obscene and weird-looking.
I couldn't have written things like 'Low' and 'Heroes,' those particular albums, if it hadn't have been for Berlin and the kind of atmosphere I felt there.
I went through all the musicians in my life who I admire as bright, intelligent, virtuosic players.
I wish myself to be a prop, if anything, for my songs. I want to be the vehicle for my songs. I would like to colour the material with as much visual expression as is necessary for that song.
I would drive to gigs in my tiny little Fiat. I would shoot up and down the M1 to play at various places.
It's amazing: I am a New Yorker. It's strange; I never thought I would be.
When I'm stuck for a closing to a lyric, I will drag out my last resort: overwhelming illogic.
I'm responsible for starting a whole new school of pretension.
I don't have a problem with ageing - in fact, I embrace that aspect of it. And am able to and obviously am going to be able to quite easily... it doesn't faze me at all.
Even though I was very shy, I found I could get onstage if I had a new identity.
If I had a talent, it was for looking askew at everything, possibly more than my contemporaries. But I had to really push myself to be a writer.
Age doesn't bother me. So many of my heroes were older guys. It's the lack of years left that weighs far heavier on me than the age that I am.
I thought that I wrote songs and wrote music, and that was sort of what I thought I was best at doing. And because nobody else was ever doing my songs, I felt - you know, I had to go out and do them.
I realized the other day that I've lived in New York longer than I've lived anywhere else. It's amazing: I am a New Yorker. It's strange; I never thought I would be.
I think it all comes back to being very selfish as an artist. I mean, I really do just write and record what interests me and I do approach the stage shows in much the same way.
I never could get over the fact that The Pixies formed, worked and separated without America taking them to its heart or even recognizing their existence for the most part.
To not be modest about it, you'll find that with only a couple of exceptions, most of the musicians that I've worked with have done their best work by far with me.
Funk, I don't think I have anything to do with funk. I've never considered myself funky.
I was very into making the Big Artistic Statement - it had to be innovative; it had to be cutting edge. I was desperately keen on being original.
I guess it's flattering that everyone believed I was those characters, but it also is dehumanizing.
I'll tell you who I absolutely adore: Ian McEwan.
These are all personal crises, I'm sure, that I manifest in a song format and project into physical situations. You make little stories up about how you feel. It's as simple as that.
There, in the chords and melodies, is everything I want to say. The words just jolly it along. It's always been my way of expressing what, for me, is inexpressible by any other means.
Frankly, I mean, sometimes the interpretations I've seen on some of the songs that I've written are a lot more interesting than the input that I put in.
Strangely, some songs you really don't want to write.
I'm just an individual who doesn't feel that I need to have somebody qualify my work in any particular way. I'm working for me.
I wanted to prove the sustaining power of music.
I believe that I often bring out the best in somebody's talents.
I'm always amazed that people take what I say seriously. I don't even take what I am seriously.
It is amazing how a new child can refocus one's direction seconds after its birth.
I'm an early riser. I get up between five and six, have coffee, and read for a couple of hours before everyone else gets up.
I've never responded well to entrenched negative thinking.
Everything I read about hitting a midlife crisis was true. I had such a struggle letting go of youthful things and learning how to exist and have enthusiasm while settling into the comfort of an older age.
Sometimes you stumble across a few chords that put you in a reflective place.
Anxiety and spiritual searching have been consistent themes with me, and that figures into my worldview. But I tend to make my songs sound like relationship songs.
For me, the world that I inhabit in reality is probably a very different world than the one people expect that I would be in.
I'm not one of those guys that has a great worldview. I kind of deal with terror and fear and isolation and abandonment.
For me, often, there's such a cloud of melancholia about knowing I'm going to have to leave my daughter on her own. I don't know what age that is going to be, thank God. It just doubles me up in grief.
Confront a corpse at least once. The absolute absence of life is the most disturbing and challenging confrontation you will ever have.
It amazes me sometimes that even intelligent people will analyze a situation or make a judgement after only recognizing the standard or traditional structure of a piece.
I guess, taking away all the theatrics or the costuming and the outer layers of what I do, I'm a writer... I write.
You would think that a rock star being married to a supermodel would be one of the greatest things in the world. It is.
On the other hand, what I like my music to do to me is awaken the ghosts inside of me. Not the demons, you understand, but the ghosts.
Art was, seriously, the only thing I'd ever wanted to own. It has always been for me a stable nourishment. I use it. It can change the way that I feel in the mornings.
A song has to take on character, shape, body and influence people to an extent that they use it for their own devices. It must affect them not just as a song, but as a lifestyle.
I change my mind a lot. I usually don't agree with what I say very much. I'm an awful liar.
All my big mistakes are when I try to second-guess or please an audience. My work is always stronger when I get very selfish about it.
