A Quote by Jim James
There were lots of songs that were on 'It Still Moves' that I had written, and we had played - rehearsed, but also played live a couple of times - that could've gone on 'At Dawn', but we always knew we wanted to make a record that was more quote-unquote 'rock n' roll.'
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Our songs were not written to be listened to in headphones or on the radio. They were written to be played. All of the little infinite detail that went into the arrangements and giving ourselves lots of breathing room in terms of playing what we wanted to play and using up any ideas that we had - all of those were conceived to be performed.
I've always played every amp I've ever had full up, because rock and roll is supposed to be played loud. Also, that's how you get your sustain.
Our first two records are a lot quieter and more studio-based. We kind of had this feeling like we wanted to make a more quote-unquote 'rock' record. Then Patrick joined and really brought a new Herculean power to the band.
As a teen-ager I played cards, shot craps, played pool, went to the track, hung around social clubs. I knew that some card and crap games were run by the mob, and some social clubs were mob social clubs. Even as a kid I knew guys that were here today, gone tomorrow, never seen again, and I knew what had happened.
I'd always wanted to do an R&B and soul record; a friend with a studio asked to come by and record a couple of songs, maybe just make a 45. Then the songs started to pour out, and pretty soon we had eight or 10 songs down.
My first couple of years in the league left me very unstable. I had some times where I played well, and I had some times were I really did not get the opportunity. After Rick Pitino gave up on me my first year, people were like, 'He can't play.' So I had to get over that hump.
I call it "being interrupted by success." We had done The Soft Bulletin, which came out in 1999, and we knew we that were gonna make another record before too long. But in between this, we were still in this mode of kind of just - not re-creating what we could be, but kind of doing different things. For the longest time in the Flaming Lips we were like, "Make a record, go on tour. Come back, make another record," and you know, I think, frankly, we were kind of like, "There's more to life than just recording records and going on tour."
For music, I always just played music myself - and, I had rock bands and wrote songs and put bands together that were loud, but not especially good. That was sort of the place music had in my career.
Anybody who has ever played in bars has played 'Keep Your Hands to Yourself.' It's a monumental piece of rock & roll. It makes you feel exactly like rock & roll is supposed to make you feel.
I'd always wanted to make a record with Jim Dickinson, and I'd known about his boys for years, ... He reminded me that when they were 13 or 14 years old they had a punk rock band and I'd called him and wanted to make a record with them then.
I remember one particular occasion when I hadn't played a solo for, quite literally, a couple of months. And I was asked to play a solo on a rock & roll thing. I played it and felt that what I'd done was absolute crap. I was so disgusted with myself that I made my mind up that I had to get out of it. It was messing me right up.
My dad has always played and coached, so that's what I knew. I played other sports but always turned toward soccer and had the same love for it as my father. They never forced me to play; I always wanted to. I was always around it.
For 'Narrow Stairs', the majority of the songs I brought in were guitar songs - songs we could sit in a room and just play. I can honestly say I had more fun and felt more inspired on this record than anything that we had done in a long time.
We were poor, yea, but I can't say there was anything terrible about my youth. It was a Manhattan kind of life. There were lots of kids on the block, and we played in the back lots. We invented games and skated and played ball.
The guys that I played with, Hollis Dixon and the Keynotes - just about all the great musicians from Muscle Shoals.We played fraternity parties and kids' dances. They were called "lead outs" for kids in high school. We played wherever we could - in the down time when you weren't recording, people had to make money.
Early on, before rock 'n' roll, I listened to big band music - anything that came over the radio - and music played by bands in hotels that our parents could dance to. We had a big radio that looked like a jukebox, with a record player on the top. The radio/record player played 78rpm records. When we moved to that house, there was a record on there, with a red label. It was Bill Monroe, or maybe it was the Stanley Brothers. I'd never heard anything like that before. Ever. And it moved me away from all the conventional music that I was hearing.
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