I design a lot of things that I wear onstage, but I’m always looking for unique stuff. I like creative things, so anything I can find at a secondhand costume shop to a Helmut Lang store, it doesn’t matter – just unique stuff.
Theatre comes alive when someone cross-dresses onstage.
When I finally decided that my only hope was to go to college, I took an acting class, and once I walked onstage, I just knew I was home.
I love experimenting with clothes for photo shoots, but when I’m onstage, I want to show people that there are other options. You can just be yourself and still make good music.
As soon as my foot is in the light onstage, I am home. It is what I love to do. It is what I have always loved to do.
And watching Ed, he’s really coming into his own doing some new things onstage I’ve never seen him do. He’s really getting into it, putting 120 percent into the show. We feel comfortable and excited.
I was a crazy Pee-wee Herman fan when I was in my early teens. Before he had the kids’ TV show, he had a nightclub show in L.A., and I had gotten a VHS copy of it. It was a kids’ show, but onstage in a bar, so it’s sort of poking fun at the kids’ show. And I was obsessed with that, and then ‘Pee-wee’s Big Adventure.’
The Comedy Store in LA, it’s a really loose room and it’s really dark and creepy and a great place to explore your own thoughts onstage.
It’s the same thing now. When I go onstage the young people scream and holler as much as the older generation.
I am quite short, but that never comes across when I’m onstage in front of people. When I get offstage and greet an audience afterwards, their first reaction is to comment on my height because it seems like a very drastic difference.
When you’re holding people’s attention, I feel you must give them high-quality ingredients. They deserve nothing but your best. And if they need information, get it, cross-check it, and try to be right. Do not waste their time; do not enjoy the ego trip of being onstage.
When I’m onstage, I feel a lot of love. But I don’t like crowds and random spectators.
You hope to catch the band on a good night and you hope that it sounds good when you hear the tapes back, and you hope that when you mix it you still have the feeling that you had when you were onstage, but it seems like it never quite works out that way!
You want to have butterflies in your stomach, because if you don’t, if you walk out onstage complacent, that’s not a good thing.
Onstage I do all the stuff I’d never do in real life, like lashing out at people who make me mad or freaking out in a long bank lineup. Performing allows me to fulfill all the sicko fantasies I’ve ever had.
My dad loves it – being onstage – but I don’t.
I was Aladdin, and then I was Captain Von Trapp from ‘Sound Of Music’ when I was 7 or 8, and then King Arthur. I was always the lead. I’ve always enjoyed being onstage, acting obnoxious, being someone that wasn’t me, hiding behind a character.
I was convinced that I was going to be onstage for the rest of my life.
More live recording. I have missed the boat over my career by not doing every second or third CD live because things happen onstage that don’t happen in the studio.
We run around onstage constantly for about an hour and 45 minutes, and we know what that can do. You just feel great at the end of the night and when you wake up in the morning.
For me, music is so passionate, I have to give it my all every time I go onstage. Onstage, it was always comfortable for me, because that’s where I felt at home.
Musicians want to be heard. So I’m not hiding. But I do like to leave it there onstage and be myself, in that sense. Because some people carry it with them.
But I love the hot sweat. I think overheating onstage is invigorating. It’s better than being comfortable. I think being comfortable is the death of a show.
There is a healthy amount of self-doubt and criticism with most people that make music. You find your areas that are your best. Onstage, I am good. But talking to someone in the grocery store? Forget about it.
I like to pace onstage.
Phil Hartman was brilliant, and Dave Foley is a really funny guy. Phil Hartman was actually even funnier offstage than he was onstage because he would say nasty things. Dave Foley’s very funny, very witty guy, very quick.
I get nervous all the time. The only time I’m not nervous is onstage, which is weird.
When I’m onstage, I’m on, but a different part of me is on: the part of me that absorbs life, sees everything occurring, and touches on everything around me.
I love eating chocolate cake and ice cream after a show. I almost justify it in my mind as, ‘You were a good boy onstage and you did your show, so now you can have some cake and ice cream.’
When I’m onstage they know I’m honest, and I try to be as humble as I can.
Two hours onstage… that’s the best part because it makes it all worth it.
Do I show up onstage late sometimes? That’s something I could definitely work on. I’m human.
I still get really nervous, though, before each performance. It kind of hits about 15 minutes before we go onstage – sometimes I don’t even want to go on. But once I’m onstage I’m fine.
I like to do the splits onstage.
When I’m on the microphone and I’m recording, or onstage, or shooting a video, I’m doing my job. When I’m not, I’m being myself.
I’m someone who is quite shy, and onstage I’m quite… extrovert.
I’m a social person, and I’m used to working as a band member. I like that. I like being a part of a family onstage and on the road.
I was always shy and had a huge fear of being onstage.
The first night was awful because I was so afraid, and I was never more afraid because it was going out of my character to be outgoing and to be vulnerable and to be out there and onstage. My hands were sweaty and I couldn’t swallow, and I drank a bottle of wine to calm my nerves.
Whether I’m performing in a club or onstage as Erika Jayne, whether I’m making records, whether I’m doing TV, I’ve got to entertain, and I have to take people away from their space and bring them into mine.
You don’t need to exorcise your personal demons onstage.
I loathe the idea of going onstage in a T-shirt and jeans.
I’ve figured out what to do with my hands… onstage. I’m a percussion player, so I grab a tambourine as much as I can.
When you get new people around you, the excitement is new because they have different take on your music. They play it in a different way, and that’s always exciting to be around. It elevates everybody onstage.
It’s hard ‘coz you have got different time zones; you can’t sleep and y’know, it’s boring way for the show to happen, but you do off the stage. Y’know, onstage it’s all better.
I feel like sometimes I get even more goofy onstage than I am offstage. I’m not trying to make the music less than what it is. Even if it’s hard for me and I have to think about a lot of details, it’s none of the audience’s business. I don’t want them to feel that I’m having a hard time.
The stuff I do and say onstage I can do easily. As a performer, that comes easily. But being social offstage, it’s not easy for me.
I’m my own most merciless critic onstage.
I don’t pull punches at all, and I write my material for adults. But if kids like it, they can come watch it. I’ll never change anything about what I do for anyone. I kind of think that’s why kids like me. If you’re a teenager, and there’s someone onstage talking to you like an adult, that’s good.
When I’m on tour, I’m in a new city every single night, and the energy and the crowds and the kids and the screaming and them knowing every single word of my music and being onstage is such an energetic feeling with a big payoff.
I really don’t think of myself as a singer. I think of myself as an entertainer, and the best place I do it is onstage.
I just kept touring and touring until it became second nature to go onstage, perform, and sing.
I did ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’ a while ago, and Lady Gaga was in the dressing room next to mine. The outfit she wore walking down the hall was even more fabulous than what she wore onstage!
I refuse to go onstage without looking into the eyes and touching everyone I’m working with… we’re all in it together, and everyone’s an equal part when we’re onstage.
I’ve worked my butt off. That keeps my feet on the ground – I’m the same Luis Fonsi onstage and at home cooking an omelette in basketball shorts.
Howard Stern gave me the best advice about Twitter and the N word. He said maybe onstage people get the intention behind the joke, but a tweet is 140 characters or less, and maybe that’s why people overreact. I don’t need to rustle any more feathers and lose any investors.
In ‘The Sound of Music,’ I was a von Trapp daughter in a white dress with a blue satin sash, and my line was, ‘I’m Brigitta. I’m 12, and all I want is a good time.’ I got a laugh. And I was so delighted, I laughed, too. Sadly, that’s a problem I still have – onstage, I laugh hysterically at how funny I am.
My parents called me the WB frog. Because when I was onstage, I would do this whole song and dance, but if my parents had a family friend over, I would just go hide in the bedroom.
When I chose to do ‘Carrie,’ I never had done anything on camera before. I was always onstage, so everything surprised me. Just going on set and walking into a makeup trailer and seeing Chloe Moretz and Julianne Moore – ‘Wow, I am part of this ensemble.’
