Zitat des Tages von Tom Petty:
It's very easy to be cynical about the hall of fame. But on the other hand, it's really a beautiful thing for someone like me. I dedicated my entire life to this music.
There's nothing like that feeling of having just written a song that you know is 'the song,' and you know it's really great, and you can't wait to share it with people; you can't wait to record it.
Most things I worry about never happen anyway.
I feel sorry for kids these days. They get so much homework. Remember the days when we put a belt around our two books and carried them home? Now they're dragging a suitcase. They have school all day, then homework from six until eleven. There's no time left to be creative.
When my record company rejected 'Full Moon Fever', I was hurt so bad. I was pretty far along in my career at that point. I'd never had anything rejected; I'd never really even had a comment. So when that happened, it was really just a board to the forehead. But then, finally, I picked myself up.
TV does not care about you or what happens to you. It's downright bad for your health now, and that's not a far-out concept. I think watching the TV news is bad for you. It is bad for your physical health and your mental health.
When I go to see people, I always kind of hope they are going to play some kind of songs I know. So you've got to know your audience. It's kind of something that is a blessing and a curse in a way. You're obligated to play some of that stuff that people know, but I don't think that's all you have to do.
Do something you really like, and hopefully it pays the rent. As far as I'm concerned, that's success.
Music is probably the only real magic I have encountered in my life. There's not some trick involved with it. It's pure and it's real. It moves, it heals, it communicates and does all these incredible things.
We don't really make bad records, though some people might like some more than others. And we have never really done a bad show. So I think in a way maybe we've been taken for granted.
I don't eat fish and chicken and all that. But I will have some eggs. So I'm not technically a vegan. But I eat pretty sensibly, and before a tour, I will usually work out a lot. I'll get a trainer, or I have a guy I've known a long time.
Rock n' roll was one thing, and then they chopped off the 'roll' and called it 'rock,' which became a sort of umbrella term for anything with a guitar in it. Like hair bands. How could we possibly believe that? It's just gotten downright silly, to the point where now it's sort of become like professional wrestling.
As time goes by, you seem to weed out the things that were making your life hard.
I think television's become a downright dangerous thing. It has no moral barometer whatsoever. If you want to talk about something that is all about money, just watch the television.
It's funny how the music industry is enraged about the Internet and the way things are copied without being paid for. But you know why people steal the music? Because they can't afford the music.
When I was a kid, we didn't have any blues stations. I never heard Howlin' Wolf or Muddy Waters or any of those people until the Stones had come along, and I took it upon myself to find out who these people were that they were covering.
I think, in America, for a long time you had groups that wanted to be stars more than they wanted to make music.
I think that if people realize that with an mp3, you're only getting five percent of the sound that's there. But when you hear the entire thing... I think it would save the music business. It's such a drastic change.
I don't know, my music has always just come from where the wind blew me. Like where I'm at during a particular moment in time.
I have turned down a lot of money for things that would have made me feel cheesy.
I don't think it's a good attitude in your life to feel that you have to be rich to have self-esteem.
I didn't think you could just become a rock and roll singer.
I'm barely prolific and incredibly lazy.
An average show is two hours. And that's usually right up to the curfew or the union triple time. I always feel like I could have played a little longer or something, but it's hard for me to pay attention to anything for longer than that.
When I met Elvis, we didn't really have a conversation. I was introduced by my uncle, and he sort of grunted my way. What stays with me is the whole scene. I had never seen a real mob scene before. I was really young and impressionable. Elvis really did look - he looked sort of not real, as if he were glowing.
In the mid-'60s, AM radio, pop radio, was just this incredible thing that played all kinds of music... You could hear Frank Sinatra right into the Yardbirds. The Beatles into Dean Martin. It was this amazing thing, and I miss it, in a way, because music has become so compartmentalized now, but in those days, it was all right in one spot.
The radio has so many rules, and songs don't. You don't necessarily write to a rule book unless you're, like, just doing it professionally, which has never been my thing.
When you get older, your health becomes important to you, things start breaking down, you've always got a different ache or pain.
When I was 15 or 16 playing in groups, we used to sit in the car and try to write the lyrics down as a song was playing, and we'd assign each person a verse, you know: 'I'm going to do the first one. You go for the second one.' And then sometimes you'd wait an hour for it to come on again so you could finish it up.
I think if I'd quit years ago, I'd never have known what I was capable of doing.
When I decided to be a musician I reckoned that that was going to be the way of less profit, less money. I was sort of giving up the idea of making a lot of money. It was what I loved to do. I would have done it anyway. If I'd had to work at Taco Bell I'd have still been out at night trying to play music.
It's kind of a lonely work, because you just have to keep your pole in the water. I always had a little routine of going into whatever room I was using at the time to write in and just staying in there till I felt like I got a bite.
