I feel like there's a lot of beauty in the darkness of Narrow Stairs, but that's not really a place I'm ready to go to for a while. I'm interested in taking a different approach and having the next record be different in tone - I'm just not interested in making another dark, dark album.
Pop was initially ignored as a moneymaker by the recording industry. In the seventies they were still relying on Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett for their big hits. You know, most of the budget for the record companies in those days went to the classical department - and those were big budget albums.
I feel like I haven't started yet. I'm looking forward to the ninth album, the thirtieth movie.
I personally really like getting a proper album with artwork and everything.
I come from a time when pop music was the coin of the cultural realm and in a certain way was the only coin of the realm; movies didn't matter as much, and not TV - it was all about pop music. In the era when I started - which was the early '60s - it was all about singles leading to albums.
If you're only making an album every 10 years, it better be good.
I feel quite excited about the possibility of working on multiple albums. There's something really iconic about having a catalog featuring a lot of albums, and I'd love to have that legacy.
Crackdown had Dave Ball playing on it. Flood worked on our next album, and Adrian Sherwood worked with us on Code.
But I always wanted to do a theatrical stuff. But when you're in a metal band of course you're limited because five people in the band, um, you've got no keyboards. . . you're limited. And I wanted. . . to go over-the-top, you know. Literally. I wanted to make an album that people would either hate or love.
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.
I suppose listening to a double album is kind of like going to the chiropractor. . . It's pretty good for you but you can't force it on anyone else.
I want to make albums that are like a Murakami novel or a Terrence Malick film - something that explicitly states its own world.
It's true, there's a lot of melancholy in my music. I don't know why, I'm not a melancholy person. I've always been drawn to it. Ever since I was a kid, if I had an album I would play the ballads on repeat.
I've never not been pleased with one of my albums. I figure because it's spoken word, there will be people who relate to it, and people who don't, so I don't worry about any of that. I've been doing it for over twenty years. I've always written because it was something I had to do, never for the glory.
Everytime you put an album out with any producer you do the same thing.
You're always frustrated, you don't have the chance to do a song on the album, like the Beatles did with Ringo and George, or like Led Zeppelin, where everybody was given a chance to contribute. There never is a chance with the Stones.
For anyone approaching any one of the cast albums, if they don't like what they hear, it's not the performer's fault.
My goal is to drop 10 projects in 2013. All albums. I gotta do it. I know the 10 projects I want to drop.
I use a combination of all my influences on my albums.
I feel that I see John Lennon now as not a celebrity. I did then. I saw him as a cardboard cutout on an album cover.
