I love pop music. I listen to it; I think you can hear it in my songwriting and my album. I’d definitely say it’s country-pop music, but it’s country first.
I signed contracts I didn’t think were a good idea but people around me said it was the way forward. It saddens me that I’ll never own my first album ever, which sucks.
I wanted to make an album that melodically people can connect to; something that reflects our times and the kinds of difficulties we face.
We’ll only be playing four new songs live, but all the material for the next album is basically finished.
I asked my friend Greg Andersson to introduce me to people that can distribute my album.
I couldn’t get my album played over the so-called smooth jazz stations. Jazz stations would not play it. You don’t always know who you’re making that soul connection with.
A song versus an album is not like a scene versus a play.
All my album artwork is body painting.
‘Gorilla Man’ is a composite of a few individuals, but the song itself was actually inspired by James Taylor. I spied his ‘Gorilla’ album laying on my floor and in some altered state, instantly started singing the chorus. It was fun to write. There’s an old notebook with at least three more verses in it somewhere.
If something gets too easy… I want to do something else. But every album is going to be me, no matter what.
I have been fortunate enough to record several singles and a whole album with Chet Atkins.
Twitter helps me connect to the people who help make my music, or the cycle of an album, complete. Without them experiencing the music, it doesn’t really exist, so it doesn’t make sense to not involve them.
In 1999, I just came out of putting out the song ‘Vivrant Thing’ and ‘Breathe and Stop’ off the ‘Amplified’ album. Clive Davis signed me to Arista.
I already had top 10 records before ‘Sunshine Superman,’ with ‘Catch the Wind’ and ‘Colors,’ but this was a real breakthrough for me. It was a consciousness change for songwriting, as people are now saying I initiated the psychedelic revolution with this album, ‘Sunshine Superman.’
You can’t get the visual thing on the record as much as you’d like to. We produced this album, and we’d never done that before, except when we produced singles for ourselves.
My favorite album would have to be Rocket To Russia. I feel this album has the most classic Ramones songs.
Just the fact that that Europe album ‘The Final Countdown’ came out in 1986 and ‘Rad’ came out in 1986… I’m starting to think that maybe 1986 is my favorite year, of all time!
My dad bought a Beatles tape when I was in fifth grade, and that was the first time I ever really – I mean I was into music, but that was the first time it really blew my mind. When I heard the ‘Red Compilation,’ which wasn’t like a proper album, I thought, ‘music was more than I had ever thought it was before.’
The Sicilian Defense album was never released and never will be if I have anything to do with it. I have not heard it since it was finished. I hope the tapes no longer exist.
A lot of people think that there has to be extreme continuity in an album, but if you look at my background, it’s variety! I want to see some variety in an artist, I want to be entertained, I want some depth. Show me some different styles!
But the approach to recording this album was kind of an organized, chaotic approach where I wanted to maintain and preserve that wild abandon to creating.
There’s no more record companies, so I have to get on the Internet and let people know the album is out there. I don’t know if we’re working for it, or if it’s working for us.
I had the honor of speaking with Asimov. The album ended up being something not directly related to Asimov, but related instead to the concept of the power of robotics.
When I came up with the idea for ‘Tuskegee,’ I didn’t want to be confined by boundaries of age, genre or demographics. I am thrilled with how well this album has been received by people from all walks of life. It is truly living up to the vision we had when we created it.
The first album is a classic record and I think the prototype of a sound that no one else does.
I always wanted to have my own album released before I graduated from high school.
Software is becoming no different than a videotape or a record album or a paperback book, and not all of us are ready for that change.
Recently, I’ve been working on anew album of material, which should be out in the new Millennium. I’m not sure which song will be put out as a single, but I’m still hoping to get another record in the charts.
‘Evita’ was four pieces of slick paper and a record album. It’s the most scary, to sit down and dictate a musical scene by scene. It was a musical unlike anything I’d ever seen before myself.
Every weekend we’ve been trying to go out of town, to let people know about this album. I’ve been trying to host parties. It’s hard, because it’s a lot of work to do both.
I was in a group called Wild Orchid and it just wasn’t working. I wasn’t being myself. What I should have done was say. ‘Girls, it’s really time for me to go on my own. I need to fulfill this dream of mine to have a solo album.’ And I didn’t know how to do that. I wanted to please them.
I don’t want to have that thing where I make an album and then I’m super-constantly present in everyone’s life for three years, and then gone for the next three.
What happens with ‘Mad Men,’ it’s like an Elvis Costello album; I’ll watch it, and then I immediately have to watch it again. AMC will play it back-to-back. I have a tendency to yell at it when my wife’s not around because if she catches me yelling at ‘Mad Men,’ then it gets weird.
I produced the Buckcherry album and I just finished a band called American Pearl on Wind-Up Records. That’s Creed’s label. They’re pretty rocking. Now I’m looking for another band to produce.
We’ve gone further on this album, where we have a Big Band song, kind of a Sinatra-type song; we have a couple songs that have electronic music on them. We’ve got a couple rock songs, maybe a little heavier than what we’ve done. So the title ‘Jekyll & Hyde’ really covers the breadth of the record.
I might do a solo album, maybe do covers, or do an acoustic thing. No Sex Pistols tours, nothing!
Each thing leapfrogs. I do a Genesis project – like now, we’re just finishing off an album – and then by the time the album is doing its thing, I could do nothing or I could do a film.
95% of the album is my writing, by choice, because it seems to be what the distributors want.
The first album I ever owned was ‘A Star is Born.’
After the success of my first album and the success of ‘Flow Joe’ kind of faded, I was struggling to make some money and make ends meet.
So I went out and bought Hard Again by Muddy Waters. That was a big learning curve. I listened to that album again and again and again. James Cotton was the harmonica player on that album.
I am thrilled to have been able to put together this new album. I listened to everything I had recorded in the 24 years with Elektra, and then just took all the ones I am mad about.
I did a double CD, ‘The Element of Surprise,’ in 1998. That album went gold.
The ‘Day Shift’ songs are things that would unfold during the daytime. ‘Night Shift’ is what would unfold during the nighttime. So, that’s how I put that whole thing together. I did both all on one album budget.
Like all bands, the first two albums are always the ones most written about, and the most covered. When a band gets to their third of fourth album, the story of the band has already been told.
The reaction to this album has just been fabulous around the world… and I’ve had offers to perform from around the world and I’m tempted to do it. I’ve got itchy lips.
At the end of the day, I want to spend time with my daughter, and this schedule enables me to do that while still having fun hosting ‘106 & Park.’ I’m not really eager to get back into music just yet; I’m really eager to get into another movie before I put out an album.
Marilyn Monroe never sold a platinum album. And more people know my music than what I look like.
I’m 18 in this album. I’m not losing fans, and I’m not disrepecting women, but you reach the maturity of taking it to the next level with a girl. It was only necessary for me to have at least one song like that.
Record sales don’t really mean anything. For us, the pressure is imagining some 15-year-old kid in Cincinnati who buys our album and doesn’t feel like he wasted his pocket money.
I hope everybody thinks they’ve got the best album. I wouldn’t have put mine out if I didn’t think it was the best.
Of course, growing up, you listen to your favorite people on the radio and you want to have an album of your own and you want to have number one songs that people know and can sing back to you when you have shows.
The album’s not dead for me; I still buy vinyl albums.
Every album I’ve ever been involved in, on the day that it came out I believed in it.
I write in English. My first album came out in Italy, and I toured and did gigs.
I don’t think I’d ever make an album of just covers because I love writing my own music.
I had a breakthrough, I think my life just became calmer, I gave up drinking. My priorities changed as I had a young daughter. The group didn’t want me to record for the Think Tank album… so I took it as a sign to leave.
