There's no man alive who has any answers. We all know that. It's like the guru trip. All a guru can do is direct you to something that you probably already know about yourself, something you might want to followup on. Apply the same thing to music and records. You might get something from a particular record that hits a nerve and something inside you. But that's your vision of it.
When we start talking about gurus, first of all we're starting to talk about something that can't be talked about, in the sense that you can never really know what a guru is as long as you are imprisoned by your own thoughts and circular ego. The true guru is someone who's transcended all that. And we don't know anything about that.
Great people do things before they're ready. They do things before they know they can do it. Doing what you're afraid of, getting out of your comfort zone, taking risks like that - that is what life is. You might be really good. You might find out something about yourself that's really special and if you're not good, who cares? You tried something. Now you know something about yourself.
Opportunities may come along for you to convert something -something that exists into something that didn't yet. That might be the beginning of it. Sometimes you just want to do things your way, want to see for yourself what lies behind the misty curtain. It's not like you see songs approaching and invite them in. It's not that easy. You want to write songs that are bigger than life. You want to say something about strange things that have happened to you, strange things you have seen. You have to know and understand something and then go past the vernacular.
Music in a movie might tell you about longing. It might tell you about fear. It might tell you any number of things, but it tells you something different. Something happy might be going on, but there can be this little sad tinge underneath that tells you something.
When someone asks me to do something, something new, something I don’t know about, and if I haven’t done it, I’ll say yes. Just so I can try something new. You never know what you might like.
The thing that makes me want to write a piece of music is having something to talk about, you know? Something I want to get across. Because I'm a composer, music is my first language, and that's what I reach for when I want to convey something.
It's like something happened to you that caused you to do what you do...you heard something somewhere, you felt something about this music that was definitely part of your own vision. That's what the whole thing is like.
I don't go through a torturous intellectual process to decide what to direct. I know what I want to direct the second I read something or hear a story. I just know when it grabs me in a certain way I want to direct it. And then I spend the next four to six months trying to talk myself out of it, because directing is really hard! But it's true, I know essentially when and what I want to do next... it's an undeniable feeling I get and it's not the same feeling I get when I wind up producing something.
I was very laced with drugs myself, but Fred seemed to be even more so than me. That might have had something to do with it. That might have had something to do with nobody wanting to play my records, too, I don't know.
The great thing about jamming is that you come in with zero preconceptions. Someone might want to play something that suggests something else to you, and the next thing you know you're on a 20-minute adventure.
When you're writing something and you know it's good, you get flushed, you can feel the blood coursing through your veins, you feel alive, all your nerve endings stand up, something just clicks.
I don't know what they're thinking about. Just because someone says, 'I like what you do' or something: They might like it today and tomorrow they might not. I've had that experience with record companies.
The Guru and Disciple relationship is where the person has a 100% belief in the Guru and that way you put your trust in the Guru, that he's going to get you out of this mess. If you are a Christian, then Christ is your Guru, and they're all disciples of Christ.
You might not feel like playing pretty all the time. Instead, you might want to play something nasty....you might want to play something out of context with the tune. It might be a note that creates so much tension it becomes unpleasant, but you want it to sound that way.
Any material can be treated in any number of ways. Sometimes I might hear something, or someone else might hear something, and say, "Wow, that sounds like classical music." Somebody else might think it sounds like a slow jam.
Champions know that there's something inside that makes a champion, and other people think that it might something external.