Pastoral Resources

I love to sing old Motown songs to myself, or some Patti Smith Edith Piaf or Billie Holiday. That gets me in the mood for singing.

I just can't seem to write songs about peace and love. Yeah right, how do you get that?

The way I choose to show my feelings is through my songs.

Maybe the most that you can expect from a relationship that goes bad is to come out of it with a few good songs.

But when I started writing songs, I stopped painting completely, and the only art things I do are connected to the career, like album sleeves and, to some extent, posters and things like that.

The quality of the writing, really. Simple as that. Beautiful words. It's very nice as a singer to do great songs, which have wonderful lyrics and strong feelings underneath the song.

I mean, there are so many of his songs that I like that I could easily do that one day.

Hollywood and the recording industry argue that current law permits the copying of songs and movies, and sharing them on the Internet. This enables young people to grow up learning how to steal.

But actually just yesterday we raised the key of one of my songs two steps up, so my voice is obviously responding. It's a muscle, and the more you use it, the more you use it right, the more you should get out of it. So yes, I sing.

But I'm not adverse to the idea of Torch Song as a musical. It would just be different. Because the play will always be there exactly as it was, and in a musical you could tell a lot of the story through songs.

The invention of Bob Dylan with his guitar belongs in its way to the same kind of tradition of something meant to be heard, as the songs of Homer.

I had to go into a studio and compose and write and press up 12 songs in 14 hours. When you're recording a song from scratch it takes you 14 hours to do just one song.

One of my theme songs is that if you can't do it in a test tube, don't do it.

One of the reasons we survive as a band is that we are seen as a band of today. We don't want to be seen as a band that tours and plays old songs. We feel that we are making the best music of our careers.

People know me for up-tempo songs because of my hits.

I always try to give my songs as gifts.

I'm now comfortable playing a lot of the old songs, and I've gotten out a lot of the old equipment.

I work hard at that, but the fact that there are a lot of good songs means there are also a lot of really bad songs I've written that you never hear.

I don't know that all the demons have been beaten, but I'm very, very proud of those songs.

I just play, and I'm always trying to write songs.