I grew up in a farm town in Indiana. In the early years I played by myself, because there were no other musicians around.
I've done an incredible amount of painters. It's an area, for me, where there's more mystery left. I've photographed so many musicians, I've been in studios so often, I know the whole process. The mystery's gone from it. I think it's important to keep mystery into our lives. There's a longing connected with it.
I envy musicians their ability to live their art and share it with an audience, in the moment. From a filmmaker's standpoint, that's so rare and pure in a way that I'm sure is way more complicated than it appears.
I think musicians like me are drawn to those older desks, not just because they're legend and lore but also because they do something really specific that is hard to emulate or re-create digitally.
Back then, I was really into composing the entire solo, beginning to end. I wanted to have it at least 80 to 90 percent complete before going into the studio. I didn't improvise in the studio. I was young, and I didn't really have the development in my playing or the ability to show up with nothing and then put down 500 ideas. I can do that now because I'm so much more of a musician now.
I wanted to be a musician but I didn't have the talent for it, so I decided I wanted to be famous, so I became an actor.
I'm in a position I never imagined I'd be in as a musician. Bob Dylan built an audience through recording and live shows. The opportunities for an artist today are totally different.
Like family, we are tied to each other. This is what all good musicians understand.
Sometimes when you meet a musician you are a fan of, and he or she isn't the friendliest person, you walk away from the experience wondering if you will ever be able to listen to their music again.
I am very self-critical, but that's a good thing because it keeps me growing as a human being and as a musician.
My son is actually named after Beck, the musician. We heard Beck on the radio and thought that was a good nickname for a child. We named our son Beckett so we could call him Beck - we reverse engineered. And then after he was born and I saw the name on the birth certificate I realized Beckett was a really pretentious name, way too literary. Luckily he's grown into it. We nearly named my second son Dashiell. Can you imagine? Beckett and Dashiell. It would have been a disaster of pretentiousness.
I’ve always considered it a great privilege to be a musician, I’ve never lost sight of that.
It's hard to find other musicians that push you to go somewhere new all the time.
Experience, like a pale musician, holds a dulcimer of patience in his hand.
Music had been going on a long time before that. You have to remember that before rock n' roll there were a bunch of jazz musicians all doing heroin. That sh*t has been around a long time.
I love being a musician. I love the lifestyle. But I think it's probably as difficult and frustrating as anything.
There are people who are really great musicians. I've met a lot of them. And I'm not a great musician. I'm adequate enough to be able to throw some chords together and write songs, but I can only feel that because I'm expressing something honestly, or in a heartfelt way, or in some way that's not bullshit, that in some way the songs have merit.
The musicians recommend that I sing a sing the way it is written the first time and then start to look for other notes that aren't in the melody.
They say that Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky was a homosexual. Truth be told, we don't love him because of that, but he was a great musician, and we all love his music. So what? I assure you that I work with these people. I sometimes award them with state prizes or decorations for their achievements in various fields. We have absolutely normal relations, and I don't see anything out of the ordinary here.
The longer you've been acting, normally, the better you are at it. As a musician, it doesn't work like that.