A Quote by James Iha

If you put all the songs together that I've written on band records, and put it up next to my solo record, there's definitely a different kind of feel than Billy's songs.
When I play solo, that's when I put it all together. I go through all of the songs that I've written wtih all of the different bands; that, for me, tells its own story, and the DVDs really enforce that.
The way we write our solo songs is that we take the emotions that we feel and put them in the lyrics. And we try to put them in the songs.
I always try to write the best song I can in the moment, and those songs are often going to end up on Death Cab for Cutie records. I don't set out to write a solo song or write a band song. I just write, and where that songs ends up is kind of TBD.
Songs kind of live in a timeless place for me, and since I make records I dunno, about every two-and-a-half to three years or something like that, it's just not enough to put all the songs that I have, no matter how much I put.
Most of the time I don't force records. I'm not one of these guys that put records out every nine, 10 months. I'm pretty long between records. I've only had a few in my career. I kind of wait until I feel I have really strong songs. I don't know if they're going to change the world or not, but I dig 'em, and if I dig 'em we make a record.
I do not want and will not take a royalty on any record I record. I think paying a royalty to a producer or engineer is ethically indefensible. The band write the songs. The band play the music. It's the band's fans who buy the records. The band is responsible for whether it's a great record or a horrible record. Royalties belong to the band. I would like to be paid like a plumber. I do the job and you pay me what it's worth.
All the songs that were written for that album are just all our first sophomore songs. So they're all from real life. Very sweet and very innocent. I think the theme of the album probably was just that it was our first record. ... Back when we were first making records, you didn't just make the music, you put a great deal of energy into the way it looked, and every word that was written on the whole thing.
'Free Mind' was a song written over a couple of years. It was pretty much three different songs that I couldn't figure out how to put together - until one day, when I was in the studio, it kind of just fell into place.
All my records have been written to be records, rather than writing a group of songs and seeing if they fit together.
I think we're definitely playing up to characters. We see ourselves as a pop band. I don't have a pseudonym because I don't really need one, because I've got a weird name, but everyone has a stage name, and it's about a certain amount of escapism, really. The songs are inspired by the personal, but because there are seven of us that work on the songs together, they end up becoming Pipettes songs, rather than about any one individual.
My dream many years ago would've been to continue to write and record songs in record/album form for years to come, but now records aren't what they were then - and so it doesn't actually feel very good to make a record of songs.
The 'Frampton' album sold better than all of the other solo records that I'd had, put together. It was over 300,000 copies, so that was a good signal that we were poised for my first gold record.
I didn't really feel any pressure when I've made records, I haven't as yet anyway. I feel when I'm making a record that I'm so excited about making new songs that when I'm doing demos of new songs, as soon as I make one that's really different I get really excited about the record, I don't care about the last record anymore.
Certain songs I feel different people should be on different tracks, you know it's emotional. I put myself into characters for certain records.
I just do as many songs as I can and then I put it together when I get sort of in the middle, maybe 30 songs, that's when I start really thinking about the name of the cd and what direction all the songs are going, that kind of stuff. But I don't ever want to corner myself, I just want to be able to express whatever I can express in songs and just pick after that.
I've never written songs about relationships. I've written songs about how I feel. The songs are more about me, than another person. That's the way I like to look at it.
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