I’ve had money thrown onstage, dollars, couple of five-dollar bills. I took the money, but it wasn’t much.
I love the tragic side. I don’t do ‘happy’ onstage. I like the dark, the disturbed.
I suddenly got used to that feeling of being in control, which I never, ever feel when I’m not onstage – a feeling that you’re the master of your own universe.
I have a big ego, but I don’t buy into it. I can’t live off the ego. It’s an honor that I get to be that guy onstage. It’s not something I earned.
I’m the most awkward person in the world, but onstage, I’m completely fine. I could run around in a thong and not care.
There’s something about being onstage, man. No matter what age I am or where I’m going, theater will constantly be the thing that accepts me and embraces me.
You know how Beyonce has Sasha Fierce? That’s how I am. When I go out onstage, I become a different person.
I’m always curious about anyone who has enough passion to go onstage and say, ‘This is what I’m really passionate about.’ It’s always worth listening to.
What we do every day onstage, there’s lights, there’s lots of other musicians, there’s an audience, there’s a microphone and mic stands – layers of the onion we have to kind of hide behind.
I always just felt more comfortable just kind of hiding behind a character than being myself onstage.
Viv had this kind of stage presence where you couldn’t ignore it. He walked onstage, he looked dangerous. You just didn’t know what he was going to do.
I wasn’t really the most charming person, socially – it took me a long time to develop my people skills – but the one place I was always comfortable was onstage, acting or singing.
I’m not good at interacting with people and am terrified to get onstage, so I just go up there, freak out and, most of the time, pack up and go home immediately after.
The first time I toured with the ‘Large Band’ in 1988, I got so tired. If I just stood still anywhere, I could go to sleep. I was that tired. But I had to perform. And I did, and after that tour, I was much less fretful about going out onstage.
I don’t wear a wig. I’d feel terrible onstage with a wig. I hate to be so ‘Actors Studio’-ish, but I like to feel it’s me out there.
I’m a performer. I push the envelope, I work in a very uncontrolled manner onstage. I do a lot of free association, it’s spontaneous, I go into character.
Thirty minutes onstage for me is literally a full day’s work. So I make sure I eat right and I make sure I keep my energy high.
Singing is about telling a story. When you are onstage, you get to be your own self… When acting, you’re someone else.
I know what my sweet spot has been. It’s personal stuff, dysfunction, fear of intimacy, family stuff, psychology stuff. I eviscerate myself onstage.
I hate touring. But being onstage is one of the absolute best things I know in my life. And it is so good, it makes up for all the bad.
I try to avoid gaining weight as much as possible because it hinders my performance onstage. Touring demands so much energy.
In the early days, we just wore black onstage. Very bold, my dear. Then we introduced white, for variety, and it simply grew and grew.
Onstage, I find absolutely nothing but exhilaration in not talking.
Onstage at Build, Phil Spencer said the Xbox is an open platform – which surprises me, because you have to get your game concept approved before you start developing it. Then you have to get every update approved. Microsoft has absolute control.
I used to be more involved with every aspect of everything onstage. I’m way more relaxed now. It feels like anything can happen.
I get an idea about something. I just start thinking about it, and then I get onstage and I talk about it, and then I think about it some more and talk about it some more, and think about it some more and talk about it some more, until it starts to take a shape.
I don’t believe you should stay onstage until people are begging you to get off. I like the idea of leaving them wanting a bit more.
Also, as I’ve gotten older and more mature, I’ve become much more comfortable in my own skin. After 25 years of doing stand-up, that’s reflected onstage.
Being in a recording studio is a very different feel from performing onstage. I mean, obviously, you can’t just go in and do what you would do onstage. It reads differently.
Being on the road has about 2 1/2 hours a day that are really great, and that’s when you’re onstage. The other 21 1/2 hours are very boring… It becomes like a void, and we chose to fill it with all the wrong things.
I was 17 or 18 when ‘The Twist’ came along, and the rest is history. Sometimes I regret it. I would have gotten more into acting. I would have been more of a legitimate performer onstage like Liza Minnelli. But I got so caught up in the dance thing that I never got into theater.
If you’re a stranger, and you’ve never met me before, I’ll probably be more reserved and quiet. If you’re my friend, you probably see the same stuff that you see me do onstage.
I don’t have a gym membership. I usually do a bit of basic yoga or stretches at home or in my dressing room before the show. I’ve done plank for 60 seconds almost every day since 2009, when I had to wear a bikini onstage in ‘South Pacific.’
In 1996, Trump had crashed a ribbon-cutting ceremony for a charity opening a nursery school for children with AIDS. Trump, who had never donated to the charity, stole a seat onstage that had been saved for a big contributor.
