I did exactly what I wanted to do. It was always my intention to put a band together and be a band and not be about the solo pop guy. That was never me. All of the musicians that made me do what I wanted to do were bands. I didn't see it any other way.
In my head I actually think my songs are pop songs. I think, Damn, that's a pop song! I can practice in front of the mirror with my hairbrush for as long as I want to. But when it finally comes out, it sounds avant-garde to people. Right up until then, though, I think, "Of course everybody feels this way. This song's the same as the Greek national anthem. "
My music has always been sort of in-between categories. Sometimes record stores - back when there were record stores - they'd put my records in the country music section, but other record stores would put my records in the pop or even the rock section. As long as it's in the store somewhere, I'm OK with it.
The classical music industry, has been an industry of covers. So we do covers, and if I compare this with the rock and pop side, what is the most exciting event?
I always value my large kitchen because it was better to do everything there, you wash up, you do everything, rather than messing up another room and I pop my typewriter just next to it. So I still write now but I was doing more writing when the children were younger.
If you don't try and explore genres and have freedom of creativity, you're just wasting your position as a pop band.
You never know exactly what pop cultural moment a show is going to step into.
I had an indie pop phase, I had just about every phase you could think of.
I have no desire whatsoever to desecrate the grave of seminal Manchester pop group the Stone Roses.
Every once in a while, someone will mail me a single popcorn kernel that didn't pop. I'll get out a fresh kernel, tape it to a piece of paper and mail it back to them.
Before pop art, there was such a thing as bad taste. Now there's kitsch, schlock, camp, and porn.
I exclusively attended public school. . . And I can honestly say that on the day of my graduation, if you had given me a pop quiz on history, science, or math, I would have in no way been able to pass it - despite the fact that I completely understood it at the time that it had been 'taught' to me, and had even made a good 'grade' on it.
Pop culture is not about depth. It's about marketing, supply and demand, consumerism.
I don't want to have my face on the cover of a Wheaties box. I wanna have my face on the cover of a Rice Krispies box. "Snap, Krackle, Mitch and Pop"!
It was important for me to duck out of the fast and furious life I'd been living as a pop star. I was in a different mood.
There's this idea, particularly in pop music and a lot of these pop fathermanager types, that you're selling the person instead of the song. You basically want to create something that the fans relate to because it's exactly like them. So there's a lot of art that's made to be in the image of the audience, but then the audience is imitating this version of themselves. It's a really weird cultural feedback loop, and it's kind of strange to watch. It's a new thing since I was a kid, really a different thing.
Hendrix is one of the most revolutionary figures in today's pop culture, musically and sociologically.
With pop stars or film stars, we become the object of people's self-definition, as well as the object of sexual definition.
I think people who just know me from my band think I don't like pop music. The truth is I love pop music.
Pop songs now, they're about the aftermath of love.