We write when the time comes, and we try to be exciting, and stuff that excites us usually makes the record.
Probably more than anybody else, I loved Nat 'King' Cole as a performer - not only his singing but his piano playing. Whenever he had a new record come out, I'd get it and try to learn how he was playing. And he was one of the nicest people I'd ever met.
There was a time when I was - after my very first record from Nashville, I thought I might not be one of those who actually really makes it, and I may end up back in Canada, just playing clubs. And that might - this might have just been it.
Music's always been a huge part of my life, and my first record came out in 1981.
I think everyone should sell whatever product they want to sell for whatever price they want to sell it for, but ultimately the market will dictate what it is and people will have to charge less money for everything. Record companies have been overcharging people for way too long and now this is the trouble that they're in.
You put too many songs on your record, and it ends up like a family with too many kids: some of them get neglected.
'Alligator' was the first record that anyone paid attention to, and it seemed like it was the screamy songs that got us that attention.
The world is so caught up in the 'American Idol' idealistic sort of tendency in regards to just thinking that this whole thing is what everybody wants, but it doesn't help you make a better record.
I know for a fact that if I could do only music, I'd be out of my mind, insane. I'd be stressed-out; there's so much work. I mean, you work constantly; there are no breaks, really. If you're not promoting a record, you're making one. If you're not making one, you're touring. If you're not touring, you're doing photo shoots and prep work.
I really wanted the first record to be different from what I'd done with Genesis, so we were trying to do things in different styles.
Because I've a track record of talking about books I never write, in Australia they think I'm about to write a book about Jane Austen. Something I said at some festival.
I want to get a hit record, and I know I can be good in horror movies.
Look closely, and you can see where the grooves of a record widen, indicating a sparseness that can only be a bass solo, or grow denser to accommodate a cresting density of sound.
My favorite films, I would put my answering machine up to the television set and hit record. I'd tape my favorite movies and then I could go back and listen to them again. I only had the soundtrack, I didn't have the visuals. But I think it made me really pay attention to the soundtracks.
That's the nice thing about being a live act. I can get the audience, but it's for the moment. It's like, 'Can I do it tonight?' And you can see when people like you. But on record - and with the pen - it's almost for all time. Really, a lot more thought has to go into it.
I think when people make a record with a goal in mind - like taking it to the next level or making them seem more mature - that gets in the way of writing great songs.
When I was making my second record, I was in studio, and I was like, 'No more ballads! Absolutely not!' And somebody walked in with 'The Man I Wanna Be' and I heard it and was like, 'Ah, crap!'
I've been doing my record label for 15 years called Dim Mak. I started my label when I was 19 in '96. I started putting out an eclectic roster of artists. In 2003, we found a band called Bloc Party, and in 2004, we started getting remixes for Bloc Party, and at the same time I was throwing Dim Mak parties in Los Angeles.
As I grew older, I actually was prepared to go into fine arts school and do a degree. That was what I was actually settled upon when I was offered a record deal.
There's a Washington standard of casually putting things off the record. It's really gone too far. I don't know an easy way to turn it back.
My record company had to beg me to stop filmin' music videos in the projects. No matter what the song was about, I had 'em out there.
Normally, banks record profits on loans only as they are repaid, whether they securitize the loans or hold them on their books.
My son was five months old, and I built a makeshift studio in my living room so that I could do the attachment parenting approach and write the record at the same time. That was fortuitous, that we could build that in the house.
Over the last 10 years a huge amount has been achieved in getting people into work. Measures such as the New Deal, tax credits, the minimum wage and improved childcare have brought about record numbers of people in work, a number that is still rising despite the global economic slowdown.
How do we make a record that's true to the vibe of the band but still maintain the pace of moving forward and doing something fresh?
I would have to say that my very first encounter with the arts was when my mother bought me my first record player when I was six years old as well as a Karen Carpenter record.
My record label always says you shouldn't talk about money because it makes people extremely uncomfortable. Refugees can't talk about money. Rappers can talk about money; refugees can't talk about money.
I don't have anything to hide. And for the record, I am not against plastic surgery. I believe that any woman that wants to do anything or fix anything that bothers her - if she's doing it for herself - I'm all for it.
Every record is a gate of a certain kind for me.
Shoot, there's a committee to tell you everything at a record label. You definitely have to know who you are if you want to look like you at the end of the process. We've all seen people get record contracts, and by the time they're spit out by the machine, we don't even recognize them.
So I have probably 1,200 little bits of paper with notes, which when the Ambien really starts to kick in, don't really make much sense. Say what you like about prescription drugs, but they do help when you're sequencing a record.
Working with David Bowie was very interesting, but I couldn't surrender to it. I should have let him produce a record for me, but I'm very perverse in some ways. He's brilliant, but the entourage were rather daunting.
Someone had an eye on me as I was leaving high school. I had a chance to record demos, but they were kind of wanting to make a pop singer out of me, of the 'X Factor' variety. I didn't feel comfortable with it. I wanted to be a songwriter.
For fifty years, debates about French anti-Semitism mainly revolved around France's record during the Second World War, when the Vichy government collaborated with the Germans.
The new record started out being about loss, but it's morphed into being about how relationships go on even though one person is not in a body anymore.
But I was very disappointed that I didn't get a chance to go overseas with that group, might not have gotten back but I wanted very much to go because there's not much of a record of the exploits of the first Negro fighter group.
