I’ve always tried different stuff in the studio. I use rakes, spoons, cans… I’m a surround-sound type of guy.
Often, I find it really hard to see what I’m doing when I’m in the thick of things. I can get too precious and have to force myself to put my paintings aside. There’s a wall in my studio where I hang paintings that I think are done or nearly done. Over time, I’ll realise which ones are working and which aren’t.
You know, Tupac would go into the studio and make like six or seven songs in one day. That’s how he operated. He was real quick with his pen.
For me it was perfect, because it wasn’t a very competitive environment, and it was a studio program. They basically send you off, and say, bring us some work, and we’ll help you improve it. It really rewarded self-discipline.
I have a studio in a barn at home – we rehearse there, we film there and we record there. It’s fun to hang out with my guys and see what comes out next.
Walt gave me a VIP tour of the studio. I remember people doing voices.
I came from a dance background, so that’s what I did my whole teenage years. I was at the dance studio a lot. It just becomes your social scene and part of your life.
On record dates like that I never felt too nervous because everything was really overdubbed. When we did that album, we were in the studio for probably a week, so you had a lot of opportunity to fix things.
Some people are the greatest people on Earth with good hearts and will get in the studio and make the most negative music in the world for the sake of success. That’s what the music business does to you. That’s what capitalism does to you.
I would love to do a big studio movie, just because they’re going to put the money into distributing it. A lot of times you do these little movies, you love them and they never get seen by anyone.
I love to study the many things that grow below the corn stalks and bring them back to the studio to study the color. If one could only catch that true color of nature – the very thought of it drives me mad.
I always say that candy is the perfect studio food – it keeps your energy going.
The ‘All My Children’ studio was near Lincoln Center, and I used to see all the ballerinas and the dancers, and I thought, I don’t want to bulk up; I want to have long, lean, toned muscles. And I found out that through Pilates, you can achieve those strong, lean dancer muscles.
I started a recording studio. I started producing people and doing remixes.
I always think I don’t have any songs, I don’t have anything I’m working on, and I get in the studio and realize there are 20 things I’m thinking about. It’s just kind of second nature.
I have only one loyalty – to my writing. I never wanted to be the head of a studio or a producer.
And I remember going to the record studio and there was a park across the street and I’d see all the children playing and I would cry because it would make me sad that I would have to work instead.
I think especially in a world where you have so little say about what goes on in your life, or in the politics of the world around you, it is wonderful to go into that studio, and tell yourself what to do.
There was a time when my mum would sew costumes for the dance studio so we could keep doing our classes because we couldn’t afford them.
I’m not interested in making a $60-million studio film with a bunch of 24-year-olds telling me what to do.
Recording studios are interesting; a lot of people say – and I agree – that you should have a lot of wood in a recording studio. It gets a kind of a sweeter sound.
Since this was the first and only series I had ever produced, I was unaware of what the ‘Normal’ environment was for a studio. I tried to run it as I did in my SF studio.
Some very famous directors have started in the mail room, which is just getting inside the studio, getting to know people, getting to know the routine.
All of my books have the potential to become movies, it’s just a question of finding a studio who wants to get behind me and put up the money to make the movie.
It varies from song to song, although Buck Owens and I recently collaborated on writing a duet together and am looking forward with a great deal of anticipation to recording that track for the new studio album.
Most films I work on, the people making the film are constantly second-guessing the executives of the studio, the producer, and the audience. It is very hard to accomplish anything in that situation.
Democracy in the studio is overrated. What you wind up getting is compromise on everybody’s part, which means that nobody has their way, and that means nobody wins, including the fans.
Usually when I start a new project there’s a fear of the unknown; maybe it’s a band I’ve never been in the studio with before. People are so different. It’s almost like you need to go through the process, discover and unlock what it is that makes that band that band. And a lot of times they don’t know it.
If you can play well in the studio, you can play well on stage.
I created a successful outdoor youth festival – the Liverd festival – against all good advice. It was a great way to explore and investigate social sculptures. Having that as my kind of studio, outside of a museum or precious white-cube gallery, that was a kind of education.
The photoshoot glitz and TV studio make-up isn’t the real me. I spend most days at home in Bristol in jeans and a T-shirt running around after the kids or shopping in the Co-op.
While I was making my solo films, RKO was busily trying to get me and Fred Astaire back together. The studio wanted to capitalize on the success of ‘Flying Down to Rio’ and realized that the pairing of Rogers and Astaire had moneymaking potential.
There’s two facets to writing a song. There’s you sitting in your room writing the sentiments of the song; the lyrics, the melody and the changes, and then there’s the part where you go into the studio and you put clothing on it.
If I’m not on tour or in the studio, I’m in nature somewhere, usually some kind of ocean. Playing music has afforded me that. It’s not lost on me that it’s a tremendous opportunity to be able to spend your life being surrounded by nature.
I write by myself and then deliver the song. Everybody knows, ‘Leave Ester alone when she’s in her zone.’ Give me a studio and the tracks, and I’ll call you when the doctor is done.
The thing is, it really did take us too long to get these recordings done. We’ve had our rough times in the studio in the past, but after four weeks most of the material would have been recorded. This time it seemed like it just goes on and on.
I’m always on tour, so I’m always trying new tracks out live before they’re released. That’s more necessity than anything, because I don’t get a proper chance to sit in a studio and work on tracks like other producers do.
When I get into the studio, it’s not about trying to get a good song, it’s about whatever comes naturally.
I do love being in my studio. Especially at night.
You should learn to be happy with what you have. Besides, the fact that I’m not a huge star has allowed me to pick and choose the roles I want to do, not the ones some person sitting in a studio office thinks I should do.
The game is No. 1. You are an adjunct to the game. In a studio, there is no game. You are the star. That’s why you are there. For the game, you can’t go away from the game and beat your chest. People are there to watch the game. You are there to supplement, not to override or overwhelm.
A lot of big studio films, which are fun and great, tend to have a formula, and you’ve seen it before, and it’s a new version of it.
An album is a whole universe, and the recording studio is a three-dimensional kind of art space that I can fill with sound. Just as the album art and videos are ways of adding more dimensions to the words and music. I like to be involved in all of it because it’s all of a piece.
When I’m working in the studio, I like to be on my own because I don’t know where I’m going; I want to be completely free to spend lots of time on songs.
There are a lot of characters that you can get into that don’t exist in the studio world.
It’s good to wander into the studio and walk out with something that’s better than you’d imagined it to be. If everything was as you imagined it to be, it just wouldn’t be as much fun.
Lately I’ve been a workaholic. I’m in the studio all the time and I’ve helped to produce a couple of artists.
When I work alone, and I’m in my studio, and I’m playing a lot of the stuff myself, I think the style of it becomes something a little different.
Every morning, I go off to a small studio behind my house to write. I try to ignore all email and phone calls until lunchtime. Then I launch into the sometimes frantic busy-ness of a tightly scheduled day.
No, if it was up to me every record would be brand new studio material but Atlantic records asked me to put out a full live record because my tour really did do well last year.
I used to sit near Marilyn Monroe in the Actor’s Studio. She’d get dressed up because that was her identity. Sad. Those cameras wouldn’t leave her alone. She didn’t know where to hide.
It’s the formulaic studio movies the make money, and when they do, the actors in them are automatically movie stars.
I’m in the studio 24 hours a day. It’s true that once you get a certain level of success, you become a target. Talk magazine should be ashamed of themselves.
