A Quote by Henry Rollins

Bands have always written songs against what they see as wrong. Ronald Reagan really made for a lot of songs. — © Henry Rollins
Bands have always written songs against what they see as wrong. Ronald Reagan really made for a lot of songs.
I was writing a lot of true love songs-true love almost gone wrong but saved at the last moment...Many of the best songs get written in a state of abject misery. I prefer to write fewer songs and have less cataclysmic events in my life...Some hit songs are really stupid, and who knows why they're hits. But a lot of hit songs are really good.
We're a live band. Some bands write their songs in the studio - we don't do that. We're playing songs on this tour that were written three days before the tour. And it feels good to try these songs.
I've written a lot of songs in the last couple years, but writing a lot of songs doesn't always mean writing good songs.
Ronald Reagan was the best Ronald Reagan ever, and Ronald Reagan was a cool guy. You're not Ronald Reagan. You can't run as him; you can't relive his career. You can't just have somebody else's career. You have to be you.
As I kid, I was always jealous of the music that my favorite bands had written - but not really of how they played. So I'd daydream about having written songs, and this way above being able to perform them.
I work hard at that, but the fact that there are a lot of good songs means there are also a lot of really bad songs I've written that you never hear.
I always wanted to know, and I always used to daydream, about what it would be like to stand on a really big stage and sing songs for a lot of people, songs that I had written... Daydreaming was kind of my No. 1 thing when I was little, because I didn't have much of a social life going on.
And I thought about how many people have loved those songs. And how many people got through a lot of bad times because of those songs. And how many people enjoyed good times with those songs. And how much those songs really mean. I think it would be great to have written one of those songs. I bet if I wrote one of them, I would be very proud. I hope the people who wrote those songs are happy. I hope they feel it's enough. I really do because they've made me happy. And I'm only one person.
What I am doing is making songs that I like that I think sounds like other songs that I like. I'm really trying my best to emulate bands that I like a lot. Which I think is what a lot of bands are doing, whether they're saying it or not.
I have amassed an enormous amount of songs about every particular condition of humankind - children's songs, marriage songs, death songs, love songs, epic songs, mystical songs, songs of leaving, songs of meeting, songs of wonder. I pretty much have got a song for every occasion.
I have written quite a lot of songs about dealing with my feelings surrounding the disease. I have written songs about the fear and anxiety I have around my disease, and the fear of it coming back. Some of my songs might seem like relationship songs, but are more about my relationship with that struggle.
I've always covered some Dylan songs. I do one or two. And I do them because they're great songs. You know some people cover songs they wish they could have written, not me. I like to cover songs I know I could not have ever written.
A lot of the album is made of love songs I've written over the past three or four years that have lasted the test of time. It's probably the thing that connects the songs together other than the sound of my vocals.
I know people who have written big hit country songs that are really kind of terrible songs, but for the rest of their life, they're the guy who wrote that. You've got to be careful; if you don't want that to happen, don't write those songs.
I feel happy about the songs I've written. I'm a great lover of the craft of songwriting, and I sure admire it in other people when I see it - past and present. I feel comfortable with what I have accomplished. I feel happy to be able to work in that environment, and that I have a lot of songs left to be written, somewhere.
Music that was made in the 60s and 70s did come from a really soulful place. The seed for the songs written in the 90s were planted in those songs, even though they were samples.
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